


Growth

by madempress



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Albus Dumbledore Bashing, F/M, Harry Potter is a Horcrux, Harry is a horror story, M/M, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, Slytherin Hermione Granger, Tags May Change, Unknown Monsters, Warnings May Change, creature!Harry, liberties were taken with wizarding britain families, minor Gryffindors bashing, the Light is not great
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:07:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22356880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madempress/pseuds/madempress
Summary: Hermione discovers the world of magic through the most curious of creatures: one who cannot Keep, but who can Give and Take.  He transforms her to covet the wildest of magics, and in exchange, she seeds the possibility of reason within His heart.  Neither of them knows all the rules to His existence.  The wizarding world, growing dimmer with each passing month, seethes.  Unknown to all, it is within Hermione’s Ambition that salvation lies.Tags, relationships, and warnings to be added as they emerge.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Comments: 49
Kudos: 191





	1. This Memory Comes, Blossoming

* * *

It is the single instant of maturation in which the magic of children becomes. Hermione Jane Granger, born to those without, can remember this instant. Her other memories fade, but her becoming will always stay vivid, blooming fresh colors across the canvas of her memory.

She is four, and a book is in her lap. She is in the park. Mary Allen has been her sitter for her entire life, and Mary is now finishing up her last year of school. Mary knows that if she leaves Hermione alone to read, Hermione might not even notice her gone. Hermione does, of course. Hermione can feel that restless agitation of the young and hot-blooded when Mary is around. She doesn’t say a word when Mary sometimes sits on a bench far from her responsibility, flush against that handsome boy.

But today, something is also different. Hermione also feels a bit restless, and her book does not hold her attention. 

Hermione remembers the creature as He had been. She remembers how in that first second, she mistook Him for a boy — so beautiful His skin, not pale or porcelain, but bronzed uneven. In His skin, thorns are made jewels. In His wild ebony hair, a bramble bush has left itself to crown Him. His eyes create two pictures framed by such wild innocence. Hermione has never seen such a luminous green as the right eye, nor so crimson a red as the left eye, above which a scar splits his skin deep like a bolt of lightning. Both eyes are bright and unerringly focused on her, and she is breathless when they brighten further at her attention.

Her good manners: “Hello!”

The boy’s lips are pastel pink. His cheekbones are high. He comes in a jumper of loose fibers, trouser hem hiding beneath the long tunic. The lips open and jagged teeth create a smile. They are triangle points, stained ever so slightly: a shark’s searching bite. The boy has no tongue but a stub when He gives a warbling note in return.

Hermione remembers this so clearly, this moment. When she ruminates on it, over the years, she thinks of how she might have reacted differently. Shouldn’t it have been natural, that she turn and flee? That unnatural creature and His horrifying, gaping maw.

Hermione does not run. She finds herself enchanted. The boy is mutilated, torn by the world, and yet He greets her so kindly. 

“I am Hermione,” she introduces, offering Him a hand to shake. He leans down to sniff it instead, and His breath is hot on her hands. It is magic that stills her and hides her fear when His teeth – sharp, pointed – gently scrape her fingers. There are soft scales, like serpents’, flushed against the corner of His jaw.

Her single instant, as His saliva soaks against her skin. Her Magic, blooming.

She does not know what it is as He releases her hand. He pushes His palms together as though clapping in delight. He does not speak – He cannot speak.

Hermione, so young, can only associate the bloom of her Magic with the softness of His jagged mouth against her flesh. She invites Him to sit in the grass with her.

He cannot speak, but He points to her book. 

Hermione only remembers vaguely that she read to Him her storybook and that He kissed her cheek in farewell, darting into the undergrowth that swelled around the creek bed that ran through the park.

Hermione had always thought it a dirty, filthy thing, as her mother and Mary had told her.

On this day, at four years old, Hermione will think to herself that maybe the creek bed is dirty to hide things. Magical things.

Over the years, Hermione would meet the boy several times. He came sporadically, months and months, and once her entire seventh year apart. It was not so long after their first meeting that He led her into the creek bed. They went under the bridge that Hermione had always been forbidden to go near. It was dirty and filthy, but the boy never was, and the water that ran through was clear and crystal, as though flowing from somewhere pure.

Hermione read to the boy, who always seemed so delighted. 

She took it upon herself to teach him to read, and in turn, he taught her about the thing that bloomed. Her Magic. He did not speak, but His soft sounds were a language in their own right, and Hermione learned to listen to them. He was Magic, and He could make the world bright and dim, could make snakes come out of the bushes. He floated rocks to her, and she floated them back, and they carved shapes into the underpass with nothing but their imaginations to guide the scratching.

In the beginning, Hermione was innocent of the implications of His presence. She had been raised a quiet, sheltered child and did not know what monsters could lurk behind a child with so many scars and such pointed teeth, a missing tongue, and no means to speak.

But Hermione grew, attended school, and learned about the shadows from which her parents could only try to protect her. She consumed book after book and knew that just like the Magic she had come to enjoy, her Magic boy was a secret thing. The world had twisted him, and there was always in her a tiny part that wanted to keep Him hidden, lest the world mangle Him even further.

When Professor McGonagall leaves, Hermione lets her parents fuss. Her boy has been gone again, and her greatest fear is that He will not return before she has to leave for her new school. Hogwarts! She thinks, and is very excited.

It does not occur to her that He is also a child of Magic and might attend. Her boy she calls as such, but He is not human and does not belong in a school. He already knows Magic and has already taught Hermione that a wand is not something that is needed. But Hermione, much like He is not, is human. And even in her youth, she knows that He is capable of things she cannot be. Where He will surely never need a magic stick, she will most assuredly.

The next few weeks pass by in anxious flurries of half-planned vacations and small day trips. Her parents had never planned for her to go to boarding school. Their Hermione had been given a very prestigious scholarship, they tell their neighbors, to a very selective boarding school. It was simply so unexpected.

But Hermione, at last, felt Him. 

He had taught her, had taught her in His strange song that He had found her because she was full of Magic, surrounded by those without. He could taste her, she had inferred, and had taught her to become sensitive to His proximity. Hermione didn’t know where He traveled, her boy, only that He wandered.

It was not long before she would leave, only so many nights in the summer before September 1st arrived, and she was whisked away.

Hermione slipped out her bedroom window as she had since she was eight, rash with the thrill that after a full year, her boy had returned. 

Her eighth year had been the year that He had begun to change. Pale scales littered His joints like armor, breaking further the bronze of His traveled skin. She had witnessed Him shed, witnessed His scars redden and bulge as His legs and arms grew sinuous. The more her boy resembled a serpent, the more the snakes flocked to them. Hermione had not feared snakes since that first summer, but that was the year that the snakes began to take to her as well.

Hermione knew that other children did not like snakes. When she was alone, her boy gone for so many weeks and months, she would beckon the snakes to her and let them curl around her wrists. She could not speak to them, but that did not mean she did not understand them in the most basic senses.

He was waiting in the tunnel, brilliant green eye glowing in the dark, the red eye dimly burning. Hermione holds out her hand, breathless with excitement, as those eyes brighten in cheerful greeting. Her hand is taken into the mouth of the beast, and her Magic blooms.

Even after grasping the handle of her wand, Hermione does not think there will ever be a more magical sensation as her boy scenting her after time apart, re-marking her His friend and companion. 

“I am to go away,” she tells her boy, excitement, and sorrow, finding even ground in her voice. His clever visage occludes. Why? His croon asks. “It is a school for people like me. For all the things you cannot teach me,” she adds sadly. 

He is not sad that she is leaving. He wanders, and now that He knows to look elsewhere, she will not be missing. He is sad that there are things they cannot learn together. 

“I am very lucky,” she tells Him. Not for the first time, but now she is suddenly scared. She knows that the Magic at school will not be the same as His magic. He is new and young, but so very, very old. “That you are my friend. I am so happy every day that you chose me.”

He warbles a happy song. He is happy that she did not run; that she let Him taste her; that she read to Him; that they shared Magic. He is a wonderful, giving creature.

She untucks the first of her school books from her back, and His eyes light with excitement. It will not be possible to read them all before she begins, but Hermione is determined to share with Him as much as possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This writing style is purposefully wonky, and purposefully flips between first and third and any-whathaveyou-person it pleases. It is not fun to run through Grammarly. Was it on accident? Was it on purpose? Maybe she's born with it!


	2. The Queen's Maiden, Through the Door She Slips

By the time September 1st rolled around, Hermione had read all about Harry Potter. The name had first been brought to her attention by a boy at the tailor. His name had been Draco Malfoy, and Hermione had not been certain what was worse: the uncertain answers she had given, or the moments when she had let him keep talking. But Draco Malfoy had been the first to note that a very special boy was going to be in Hogwarts – Draco Malfoy hadn’t even been the only one to emphasize how he would be Harry Potter’s best friend.

Hermione had thought it a bit silly – obviously, Harry Potter would already _have_ a best friend. Even she, notoriously bad with children her age, had a best friend. And Harry Potter’s friend would likely be going to Hogwarts with the Boy Who Lived, given the boy’s importance to the Wizarding World.

But it did not take the entire train ride to realize that there was another fatal flaw in Draco Malfoy’s plan. Harry Potter was not on the train. The older years knew it, the younger years learned it, and Hermione had to wonder at the anxious energy Professor McGonagall let off as she herded the First Years to gather around her. Shouldn’t the school have known if Harry Potter wasn’t going to be on the train? Wouldn’t his guardians have communicated that?

Professor McGonagall led them into an entrance hall. Hermione had read about the entrance hall, had read all of Hogwarts, a History to her boy, the light of their combined magic floating just high enough to not cast a glare on the pages of the book. The ceiling stretched up and up further, magic rendering physics meaningless. 

At one end of the entrance hall, a great pair of double doors stood. Even closed, Hermione could hear the sound of many people gathered in one place. The Great Hall, where the four houses and teachers ate breakfast every morning and lunch at midday and dinner, every night. Excitement was growing in her chest. She had Magic. Maybe no friend here would be her best friend, but Hermione was certain that here, at last, she would find others who were never satisfied, always searching.

Even her boy was not like that. He was always satisfied, always certain.

Professor McGonagall began to explain the sorting process, and Hermione tuned her out. She would be in Ravenclaw. Even her parents, so uncertain about everything the wizarding world had shown them, had been certain about it when Hermione had read to them about the four houses. Still, it would have been nice to be in Gryffindor, if that was where Harry Potter was to be. But Harry Potter wasn’t there, and Hermione didn’t know what sort of person he would be when he finally was.

Now Professor McGonagall had sharpened her voice into direction once again. “Form a line,” she told them, “and follow me.”

The Great Hall was more than any book could do it justice. There was a certain frivolity to the candles floating over four long tables, a dimness that a hundred thousand candles could not flush out compared to a proper muggle light – or, as Hermione had discovered, the luminous white that her boy had taught her. She was certain that the equivalent would be _Lumos_ , but only tonight would she be able to test her theory. 

The tables, already covered in students of varying heights and ages, were laid with empty golden table settings that glinted in the light of the candles. Far above, Hermione looked, already knowing what she would find.

“Look at it,” she told the boy next to her, stunned at the reality. Draco Malfoy looked up at the breathless prompting of the girl he vaguely recognized. The velvety black ceiling dotted with stars was the sky they’d seen outside. It _was_ beautiful.

“It’s bewitched to look like the sky outside,” she told him, and Hermione did not mean to spout knowledge so prolifically, but it was so fascinating. “Do you think it will rain on us?”

The boy muffled a snort.

Hermione looked down – facing the rows of students, a single great table ran nearly the width of the hall atop a raised dais, holding the teachers. The line was prompted to a halt as Professor McGonagall set a stool quietly down at the front. It was a plain, rickety four-legged stool, suited for short eleven-year-old legs. 

On top of the stool, Professor McGonagall placed a pointed wizard hat. It wasn’t new, like the hat perched on Hermione’s head, or the heads of all her peers. It was old and frayed, a beaten brown leather. A traveling hat, really, and somewhat dirty.

There was a sort of anticipatory silence, but Hermione already knew what was supposed to happen. The hat twitched. A rip near the brim opened wide like a comical mouth, and the hat began to sing. It was a toneless rhyme, but quite jaunty. What Hogwarts, a History, came out and said direct, the hat implied cheerfully. It could see into their minds, get a sense of their personality. It was enchanted in a way no one was certain of, and sorted new children into whichever of the four Hogwarts houses it felt they would do best.

A boy somewhere behind her mumbled something about not having to fight a troll. 

Professor McGonagall stepped forward again as the song ended, and waited for the applause of the students at the tables to die down.

“When I call your name,” Professor McGonagall commanded, “come sit up on the stool and put on the hat. Abbot, Hannah!”

A pink-faced girl with blonde pigtails stumbled out from behind Hermione and rushed to put on the hat as she sat down. A moment’s pause was all it took.

“HUFFLEPUFF!” shouted the hat.

The table on the right of the first years erupted into applause. They wore yellow and black ties, and as Hannah Abbot scurried to where there was plenty of space in the middle, her tie went from black and white to black and yellow, too.

“Bones, Susan!” 

“HUFFLEPUFF!” The hat shouted, and Susan flung herself into the spot next to Hannah, flushed and pleased. The girls, Hermione realized, were friends.

“Boot, Terry!”

“RAVENCLAW!” This time, the table to the left of the first years clapped as was space made at the table.

“Brocklehurst, Mandy,” went to Ravenclaw, but “Brown, Lavender,” became the first new Gryffindor, and the table on the far left exploded with a great deal of noise. They did not make space in the center of the table, but rather seemed to welcome Brown and pull her into the first suitable gap in a disorganized fashion.

“Bulstrode, Millicent” then became a Slytherin. Hermione could not help but notice that while the Slytherin’s also made space for their first years – not near, but in the _dead_ center of the table, and on the far side, at that, so that they were able to see the rest of the great hall without straining, they also clapped very formally. They looked put together, neat — a little _cold_.

Crabb, Vincent took hours to get sent off to Hufflepuff, and next to her, Draco Malfoy snorted when he finally did. Finch-Fletchly, Justin, took no time at all to be sent off to Hufflepuff. Finnigan, Seamus took a minute.

“Granger, Hermione!” 

Hermione felt the blood leave her legs, and she floated to the stool. _People like her, the hat could find her that place_ , and then a voice was hmming in her ear.

“My,” the voice of the hat considered. “Isn’t that an odd ambition. Or rather, quite a collection you got there! A thirst to prove yourself, to gain great things from your Magic, and _my_ , you do have an interesting friend!”

Hermione felt a pinprick of unease. Her thoughts were too disorganized to track, and in the end, all she could think of was Him, His warm, happy gurgle at the sight of her. Hermione had to share this with Him, had to somehow fit herself into His wild, wild Magic. It would be Hogwarts that allowed her to do that.

“It will be tricky, yes, but you are more than capable. Better be _SLYTHERIN!”_

Hermione blinked as Professor McGonagall plucked the hat off her head.

Slytherin? Not Ravenclaw? No, no, the hat hadn’t even really thought about how much Hermione liked to read. Hermione looked at the Slytherin table. They were clapping politely, but she thought there were some sneers, in there.

She knew why, of course. Hogwarts, a History didn’t imply but in passing, but the same book that had pontificated on Harry Potter had mentioned at least twice that Slytherin housed only purebloods and the rarer half-blood. They all knew each other, knew all the family names.

And Hermione was a muggle-born.

She quietly slid into the space next to Bulstrode, who pointedly scooted a few inches away.

The older student on Hermione’s other side was not as tactless, but he gave her a stern scowl.

How were these people like her? How did these people have anything to do with Hermione’s need to understand the world? Would they pursue every answer, every avenue? Slytherin was full of ambition and cunning, and Hermione supposed she could be clever enough to avoid trouble, and certainly, she was ambitious…

…maybe it was because of Him. Maybe the hat had seen the snakes. But that seemed so petty a reason.

Hermione straightened her back and waited for the rest of the sorting. Goyle, Gregory found a place next to Bulstrode, and almost immediately after him came Greengrass, Daphne. Malfoy, Draco joined the Slytherin table without the hat having moved his hair, and haughtily sat down between Bulstrode and Hermione, though there was also a hearty inch between him and Hermione’s skirt hem. Moon went into Ravenclaw, and then Nott and Parkinson all pushed Bulstrode and Goyle further down. The Patil twins went to different houses, and then Perks, Sally-Anne was sent to Hufflepuff, before there was a brief moment of expectation. Thomas, Dean, went to Gryffindor as the student body exhaled in disappointment. Turpin, Lisa, went to Ravenclaw. A red-headed boy joined several other similarly colored students at Gryffindor. 

At last, Zabini, Blaise, sat between Parkinson and Nott, and Professor McGonagall rolled up her scroll and took the Sorting Hat and stool away.

Hermione sat stiffly in silence, painfully aware of how every other table kept a constant murmur even as the Headmaster – Dumbledore, Albus, Chief Wizenamagot, Warlock, inventor of 12 uses of dragon blood – stood. The Slytherins were silent. The Headmaster opened his arms wide and beamed. “Welcome!” He said, and although his voice was old, there was still a great deal of power to it. “Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts. A few words: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!” And he sat back down.

Everybody clapped and cheered, though Hermione thought several of the older students around the Slytherin table shared irritated looks. “Is he a bit mad?” She risked asking the older boy to her left.

“Powerful, but mad,” the boy informed her in a short tone of voice.

Hermione fell silent and instead found herself stuffing excitement back down her throat as the dishes in front of the students piled with food. 

“So, Granger,” Parkinson spoke up. “A muggle-born, right?” 

“She must be,” Greengrass replied scathingly. “Really, Pansy, at the dinner table?”

Hermione pursed her lips. She did not belong at this table.

“I think its fascinating,” Draco spoke up haughtily. “I cannot wait to see what my father has to say about it.” The group seemed to know each other quite well. Even the older students around them seemed to understand that it was rather important that Draco’s father have an opinion about Hermione’s sorting. 

Hermione knew a few things from her books. There were no muggle-borns in Slytherin, not really ever. The Malfoy family was quite powerful. There were other names that she heard dropped in the next hour – other powerful wizarding families that were a bit like nobility. They threw around their family names quite a bit, actually, and Hermione ate and listened, and swallowed the thousands of questions and comments with bitter sips of pumpkin juice.

She learned that their Head of House was the Potions Professor, Severus Snape. But Hermione already knew about Severus Snape. 

“How wonderful!” She exclaimed, unable to help herself. “I would have thought a Potions Master much to busy to care for teaching children.”

The older years – the oldest years, really, the 16 and 17 year olds in earshot, considered her with polite sneers. Hermione had not known a polite sneer existed. Her year mates were not quite so graceful.

It was an ill omen of things to come.

Slytherin House had a hierarchy, Hermione learned quickly. There were the seventh years, who, by virtue of magical power and often family name, oversaw Slytherin. Some were heirs and had just or were about to receive titles. There were the fifth and sixth years, who fell under that direct purview, and then there were the first through fourth years. While those younger were overseen by those older, it was really only in the context of the rest of the school. The younger years were left to sort out factions, groups, or positions of power themselves. 

Doing right by Slytherin was part of it, but not by much. Family name, _money, power_ , _ancestry_ was most of it, the younger you were. The older you got, the more important magical power and knowledge became, overriding the often similar backgrounds. 

Hermione knew that her year mates were considered unusual because only Goyle and herself were not of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Her entire year was considered unusual because, in the other houses, the Abbotts, the Longbottoms, the Macmillans, and the Weasleys also had children. It was the largest class of those with “purest blood” to have come to Hogwarts since before the start of You-Know-Who’s war.

Draco led the first years with assumed authority. Hermione had attempted to establish knowledge as her right to Slytherin placement. Draco called Hermione know-it-all-mud-blood, and because he had done it in the safety of the common room, no one corrected him. When third years sent tripping jinxes into her ankles as Hermione traversed the library stacks, no one stopped them. And Hermione was awkward enough that the rest of the school gave her no source of comfort.

Hermione bit her lips, drew blood, and thought of how sweet her boy was, always so happy to grip her hand so gently with His teeth. “I want to learn Magic,” she told the Black Lake, wiping away her tears. Somewhere, He wandered, and Hermione wondered how soon it would be before she saw Him. “I want to learn Magic and be able to wander with you,” she sniffled, hiccuping. “It isn’t fair.”

Professor Snape had been quite clear as to what he thought of _fair_.

A hissing at her feet gave her pause.

The little garter snake was young, nudging at her ankle.

Hermione hadn’t come outside except to get to Herbology thus far. She hadn’t seen any snakes in the castle and had been largely consumed by hiding in the library, regardless.

“Hullo,” she told it, ever polite. The garter snake made its way up her shoe and into the boot’s lip, winding around her ankle.

A smile made it to Hermione’s face. She had missed it a little, letting them wind around her like little pieces of jewelry. In her yard at home, they had made wonderful companions, a little piece of her boy’s Magic even when He was far, far away. Sometimes she had found them in her bedroom, especially that year when He had been gone entirely, as though He had sent them in His stead.

“I miss Him quite a lot,” Hermione told the garter snake. Not for the first time, she thought of how nice it would be if she could also speak to snakes.

But she could not, and as Professor Snape had noted dourly to the ever-indignant Gryffindors, it was not fair.

The garter snake was gone by the time she had gone back inside for dinner.

Disheartened, Hermione returned to the castle. 

That night, she drew her curtains shut and set her wand on her pillow. She raised her palms and brought the Magic that flowed in her fingers, just the way her boy had taught her. The light really was like _Lumos_ , maybe a bit more spread out. Hermione bounced it between her palms, the odd, echoing sensation of something that was not solid being treated as such.

The silent rustle on her sheets startled her.

The snake was not as small as the garter had been, but it glided to her and wrapped around her leg.

A small part of Hermione hoped this meant He had heard her, that if He could not come to her as sometimes he could not, He would send her companions. 

There was another snake the next morning.

A third, two days after that. They did not always accompany Hermione to class, but there was almost always one in her bed, under her pillow, or hiding in her sheets after that. 

“What are you doing, Granger?”

Liam Rosier was not a nice boy, by any stretch of the imagination. The fifth-year had fine features and long dark hair, and there was always a wicked glimmer in his hazel eyes. But he was better than many and was among the several older years who tolerated Hermione. Her status as a mud-blood in Slytherin tended to lend the teachers to sympathize with her. Her nature had lent her some natural talent to accompany her love of books. The result was extra house points. That she did not make a fuss over Slytherin’s order helped.

“I am trying to learn how to summon mice,” Hermione told him, frustration evident. Hermione had known for years how to make places warm for herself, Him, and snakes – placing a palm and encouraging heat to bloom was second nature when she so desired. But He was not here to listen to the snakes and stroke their scales, unable to hiss replies, and yet, Hermione knew without a doubt, Heard and even Spoke to them with his Magic. 

Hermione needed to thank them on her own, somehow. 

“You’re too young,” Liam told her flippantly. “Next year, perhaps.”

“How can you be sure?” Hermione challenged. Liam liked it when she challenged him. It was nearing mid-November, and Hermione had long-since separated her housemates into behavioral categories. Liam was one of those who seemed to see her potential, and though he expected public respect, he also gave her help when he decided she needed it. It was very rare that he decided she needed it.

There were those who she did better pretending to be invisible around. Hallost, Gourd, Whitehall, Marenfall. Lesser, lesser houses, and a surprising number of half-bloods. If anything, it was the purebloods with so little to fear that gave her consideration. Rosier; Renigald Nott, the head boy. Agartha Avery, a sixth-year with sharp blue eyes who had occasionally drifted by Hermione in the library, setting down a book among Hermione’s piles casually without a word. Burke, Rowle. Corbin Parkinson, Pansy’s older brother. Selwyn; Yaxley. 

There were three Selwyns, and Jason Yaxley was a brute. Not unlike Gregory Goyle, Yaxley could comprehend only so much of the world around him. Hermione was in Slytherin, and he could not quite handle that he had to be disdainful of her inside the house walls and protect her outside of them.

Jason Yaxley was one of Hermione’s favorite Seventh years, although she thought he might be slow due to… well, it was a bit obvious, having taken it upon herself to look up the family lines of her classmates. The Purebloods of Britain had an inbreeding problem. But Jason was so slow that he was borderline sweet, so long as you had a green and silver tie.

Manipulating him was a matter of being honest, so long as you wore those colors, and so Hermione found a sort of friendship with him.

Liam was more difficult by tenfold. Liam would be in Nott’s position in two more years: maybe not head boy, but certainly the untitled King of Slytherin. He was a valuable boy to have on your side, and Hermione had wizened quickly enough on how to gain from him without losing too much. She could challenge him because Liam Rosier came from a family of power, and his father was like Lucius Malfoy in many ways. You did not challenge the Rosier line any more than you challenged the Malfoy. And Hermione supposed that was a bit boring, so if she was clever, he let her nip at his heels.

Hermione was learning very quickly to be as clever as she could be.

“Can you cast it?”

Hermione showed Liam the wand movement. Her perfectly enunciated spell produced nothing. 

“You’re too young,” Liam repeated, obviously amused. He drifted away, and Hermione knew he was telling her to figure it out for herself.

Not the spell. Hermione was doing everything perfectly. It was something else.

Hermione would figure it out.

Of course, there was the yet unanswered question of Harry Potter. 

The drama had unfolded slowly, and Hermione did not always keep up. She had been surprised to discover that at first, Dumbledore had been most wildly accused in the papers, apparently responsible for the child’s well-being. Dumbledore had taken Harry Potter to live with his muggle relatives and had placed all manner of enchantments to ensure that Harry Potter stayed safe and comfortable.

The reason for his disappearance was not as malicious as first assumed. All of Dumbledore’s enchantments had been made with the assumption that the greatest threat to Harry Potter would come from someone wishing him harm. 

THE BOY-WHO-LIVED DIES AT AGE 2 OF HEART ATTACK, the Daily Prophet read. Older students passed their copies around for the younger years to read. “At this time, it appears very likely that unknown complications affected young Mister Potter’s heart, perhaps even as a result of the attack that night,” Draco read out loud, a troubled expression on his face. His father had subscribed to his heir several wizarding magazines, though Hermione had yet to figure any favor she could trade for access to the variety at the boy’s disposal. “The muggle autopsy, we have found, was very thorough, though they could not account for many magical influences, there are also no anomalies to suggest there was anything but a heart attack.”

There was a bit more – monitoring enchantments would not have alerted authorities to the ailment or death of the child if it was completely benign. The article even mentioned that it might simply be a case of infant death. “It has been confirmed that against the traditions of nobles houses, the young Boy Who Lived was cremated, and his ashes scattered to the winds in a common muggle ritual,” Draco finished with a hiss. 

“Preposterous!” Pansy squawked.

“How terrible,” Daphne murmured. 

“I cannot believe the incompetence,” Draco snapped the Daily Prophet shut with a rip of the paper. “To not know that he had been dead for nine years?! And to let his relatives burn his body!”

Hermione glanced around the table. A similar sentiment was being shared down the line, and Hermione wasn’t sure why. She wasn’t stupid enough to ask, but she risked trying to catch one of the older years’ eyes.

Liam looked furious. Agartha had her lips pressed in a thin line. Jason was half the table length down.

Hermione glanced at the other First Years. It wasn’t worth it. She would look it up in the library.

“You won’t find the answer here,” Agartha informed Hermione. 

Hermione looked at the sixth year prefect, squinting a moment before glancing around. She’d lost track of time, and it was bordering on curfew. Slytherin prefects made a habit of making rounds when curfew drew near. Those not responsible enough to spare them the trouble were punished internally, and the House kept its lead in points.

Hermione was cutting it close. She scrambled to gather up her books and found herself surprised when Agartha bodily stopped her from piling several into her bag. “These won’t help,” Agartha repeated.

Hermione looked at her with wide eyes. Pointing the mud-blood in the right direction so blatantly wasn’t a part of the game. Agartha, however, did not leave it at that. She escorted Hermione into the cold, quiet halls, and towards the common room.

“Cremation is considered barbaric.” Agartha began to speak again. She was very pretty, actually, but stiffer than many of her formal peers. Hermione knew she was engaged to the Nott heir, who had graduated two years before. “Bodies that are cremated are destroyed, and there is not enough left to connect with Magic. We cannot communicate to their spirits, and even lose knowledge in the bloodlines due to the loss,” Agartha explained. “For all that you will learn that the witch burnings were largely harmless, there are those who we have lost forever.”

Hermione blinked back a burning understanding and made a noise that she hope indicated her comprehension. “Why would there be no books?” She finally managed to ask, for Agartha had a much longer stride and was Hermione had to work to keep up.

Agartha spared her a cold glance. Hermione had come to understand that sometimes, the chill was not intended for her directly. She had brought Slytherin honor, in some ways, with her ability to… not fit _in_ , exactly, but not be left outside.

“Books that speak directly against the practice speak against the practice in anti-muggle context, as muggles,” Agartha spat the word, “are the only ones who have ever purposefully cremated a body. And our dear, benevolent headmaster does not believe that such books belong in the Hogwarts library.”

Hermione let the prefect guide her along, letting the revelation sink in.

At the end of the night, Hermione went to bed. She didn’t think very long about the actual point: that Harry Potter had been cremated after dying of a heart attack at age 2. After all, it was not as though a 2-year-old would have a spirit worth communicating with, and Hermione was almost glad – it seemed as though the Boy Who Lived was a great deal of drama.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was reviewing the story post and realized I had left out an important tag. Hermione will be growing into a relationship yet to be determined because she has agency and is clever enough to watch as boys grow into men. But this was always a Harrymort story, and it occurred to me that some people might prefer to avoid that eventuality. Its sorta like how I haven't read the 7th book or watched beyond the 5th movie because J.K. Rowling lost me around the time Harry randomly chose the conveniently spunky, red-headed sister of his best friend like he really knew that much about her except that she had shown poor judgment as an 11-year-old, and had kissed more guys at 15 than Hermione. It was just... so... random and Freudian. And permanent. But that is why we have fanfiction.


	3. The Queen, Her Maiden She Cloaks in Armored Scales

It was nearing the end of November when Hermione felt a long-missed sensation tugging in her body like a faint echo. He was near! Hermione did not have to guess where He would come from, either. Her boy would dart through the Forbidden Forest, and the other creatures in the dark would not make Him afraid. Hermione trembled in excitement from the moment she woke up through the entirety of breakfast, and only Blaise’s scathing remarks in Potions made her stop her fidgeting. 

Oh, but she missed Him so! Slytherin was very tiring, and though His serpents were always very kind and generous with their attentions, they were not always easy to hide on her person, and certainly no more than one at a time. Hermione considered it exceptionally fortunate that none of her peers had discovered her predilection for serpents. 

It was not the Slytherins she feared, though she had no way of explaining to them His Magic or anything else, it was the other houses. She only let the smallest snakes curl around her ankles in the cuff of her boots or twine themselves underneath her robes against the straps of her training bra. 

And how would she sneak out? Hermione stressed about it, for she could not simply leave the sensation alone, and yet leaving the safety of the Slytherin dormitory after curfew was foolish for so many reasons. 

But she had to.

The sense of His nearness was even greater by the time curfew had rung. Hermione feared to wait too long. He did not belong in Hogwarts, and yet He was not always aware of where it was safe for Him to go. Once, He had waited for her in her bedroom, eyes alight with innocent pleasure when she had at last returned from an excursion with her parents. 

Hermione chose one of the common room chairs turned away from entrance and fire and curled into the cushions. Around her, the common room was a delicate symphony of children, the notes thrumming against her chest in irritation. It was only Tuesday, so surely, the common room would empty quickly! 

But first semester exams were upon them, and the older students were diligently working. 

Hermione knew that she had made herself quiet, like a mouse and unobtrusive to the eye many times when sneaking out to see Him. But that had been at home, with her parents, who had been born without.

The last of the younger students went to bed. Hermione considered herself in the clear when none of her roommates appeared to note her absence and curled in on herself further as she gauged the level of noise in the room. 

The purebloods, in their tight-knit circles, were talking behind privacy charms next to the fire. Hermione was not sure if there was anyone else and did not want to risk poking her head out. She waited, listening to the grandfather clock tick in the ever-deepening night.

A snake emerged from her boot cuff and flicked its tongue at her. 

Hermione clamped her eyes shut. If she were caught, she would absolutely be _Outside_. 

And yet, He was waiting, Magic singing.

Hermione forced herself to calm, focusing on that clever little corner of her magic that she called the mouse. Quiet Hermione, unnoticeable. Silent, skittering shadow to shadow. So insignificant that no one would care.

Hermione shifted out of the chair and strode for the common room entrance. She couldn’t turn her head to look. If they saw, they would call out, but there was nothing. The common room entrance slipped open, and Hermione skittered out.

Liam Rosier tilted his head and looked around the common room properly. He was the only one facing any of the rest of the common room’s generous sprawl; the rest had their eyes on books and parchments or the fire or each other.

But what had he just seen?

Surely it had been nothing, but a trick of the firelight, casting shadows? No one in Slytherin was foolish enough to try to sneak out, and none of the older years had a reason to make their departure so flighty.

Hermione darted down the halls once free of the immediate hallways surrounding the common room, where any older years breaking curfew tended to do so under the protection of Professor Snape’s moderate lenience. She avoided the main hallways and went down a bit, past where an unfortunate incident back in October had left her scrambling to hide from Slytherin second years and a group of Gryffindor firsties. 

The Slytherins knew hexes, but every single one of the Gryffindor boys seemed perfectly comfortable with their hands instead of a wand.

There were more twists and turns until she descended one corner stairwell of a sunken courtyard and veered straight around the corner into the stairwell’s continued descent.

Hermione counted carefully past three doors, took a left into a classroom, through the classroom’s back exit, continued down the corridor for another two doors, and then shrank into the wall before just before the final classroom in the stretch of the hall. There was nothing particularly interesting about the wall, of course, except that four stumbling steps later she was in an alcove off to the far side of the castle’s front entrance hall, staring at the Black Lake where the castle perched over the steeper side of its cliffside home, her hair rustling slightly in the midnight breeze.

Hermione had encountered the _quirk_ , as she liked to call it (not being quite a secret passageway) completely by accident. It required going into the classroom and back out the rear door to work, as she had discovered after a frustrating afternoon of testing, and to get back to Hogwarts proper, one had to go through the classroom the same way, not backward. Otherwise, the hallway came to an abrupt stop, and as Hermione could testify, there was nothing quite as terrifying as finding yourself in a hallway with classroom doors and no certain exit.

But now she was outside, and there wasn’t a teacher in sight. Hermione grinned and concentrated on the slight tug on her senses.

She did take a cautionary look back as she began to dart her way down across the grounds, trying to go from shadow to shadow rather than so directly through the sprawling lawns, but the windows that faced the lawns were dark or empty. She stumbled twice in the near pitch black, and ignoring her definite scrapes, kept going.

Down to the lake, Hermione’s senses took her, until she found herself where the Black Lake met flush against the Forbidden Forest. The Gamekeeper’s Hut was over a hill, and Hogwarts seemed far away.

A warbled note of delight brought Hermione’s eyes straining in the night. 

From the thickets, He emerged, just as He’d been before she’d left on September 1st.

Hermione threw her arms around Him. “You came!” She whispered, trying to stifle her voice.

“I-O-E,” He replied, teeth straining against His wide-spread lips, the closest He could come to pronouncing her name.

Hermione took a step back, chest heaving from the adrenaline of His presence.

He gurgled a few sounds and pressed His palms to her breasts. Warmth flooded Hermione immediately, and she thanked Him breathlessly. She had been unable to dress for the chilly night air without drawing attention to herself, and could only be thankful it had not snowed. His warmth was always stronger than her own, though the first time He had pressed His hands to her chest, Hermione had squealed in embarrassment.

Hermione looked Him over, as she always did. It seemed, sometimes, as though His eyes got brighter every time she saw Him. His skin was still the bronze of one who saw all the sun the British Isles could offer, the palet interrupted by a multitude of scars, scratches, burn marks, and the scales that flexed around His joints.

She offered Him her hand.

His slight figure, still no taller than she, took the appendage gently in both His warm palms and raised her wrist. Wide, his mouth opened, and so delicately did He grip her hand with His shark’s bite, hot breath steaming against her skin.

He returned her hand, satisfied, and grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to the first fallen log in their path, gesturing for her to sit.

“Not here,” Hermione told him, glancing towards the castle. There was no moon, but it was not merely her tenuous peace in Slytherin that was at stake if they were caught. “Out of sight?” 

He tilted His head. His hair had always been a wild mane, kept more in place by wayward twigs and leaves, but it continued to grow and grow. Hermione was unsurprised to see a slender snake poke its head out of the tangle as He led her deeper into the damp woods. When they came to a stop further under the canopy, the snake slithered over His collarbone and wound around His arm patiently until it felt it could safely reach the ground.

One green and one red eye looked at her hopefully, and Hermione smiled, drawing her wand from her sleeve. He grinned expectantly.

“ _Muffliato_ ,” Hermione pronounced proudly and felt a small spark of magic fill the air around them. Her strength, as Rosier had directed her to understand, was weak because of her age, but the quieting spell was not a difficult thing to cast, and the small area she had directed it around would be easy to keep up.

He clapped His hands together, delighted, and spread them again, throwing His magic out in a gentle shockwave that rustled the leaves. 

Hermione felt her spell gain strength and sat closer to His side.

“Would you like to hear about it?” She asked, and He nodded eagerly.

Somewhere to his left, someone absently recast a heating charm. Liam raised his head to track the number of courtyard occupants. 

It was a sunken courtyard that could only be accessed by some of the more obscure dungeon hallways. Most of the other houses didn’t even know it existed, as even the more adventurous breeds of Gryffindors liked to stay out of the dungeons. The very same reasons had encouraged the Slytherins to spend year after year enjoying the courtyard, passing the knowledge through generations – the dungeons were private, avoided, but also dark and what little sunlight they received filtered through the waters of the Black Lake first.

Why it was so hard to enchant windows when the entire ceiling of the Great Hall was the sky, Liam wasn’t sure.

The courtyard was a frequent escape from months of dim, dark halls, and it was also something of a privilege. By unspoken rule, you were invited before you could consider it available for use. Some Slytherins went their entire school career without ever knowing about it, much less stepping foot inside.

“Granger!”

Heads rose from bending over books and parchment in disbelief. It was nearing Saturday midday, and sunlight was straining past towering castle architecture to light the yard. There was a threat of snow in the air, and the warming charms had been cast with a group effort.

The mudblood appeared as stunned as they were as she froze in midstep, rounding a corner. She had books clutched to her chest and was dressed in full Winter gear, but she had been coming up a stairwell that only briefly touched the courtyard before turning and continuing up. Liam wasn’t even sure where the stairs went, but none of the hallways around them led outside.

“What are you doing, mudblood?” Delilah Rhodes was the female 5th-year prefect and preferred to pretend Granger didn’t exist. 

“I… I was studying,” Granger swallowed, brown eyes wide. “The classrooms are quiet, down here.”

It might have explained the coat, for the classrooms in the dungeons were freezing and a first year’s warming charms – assuming they could cast one at all – wouldn’t be nearly strong enough to stave off chills.

“You shouldn’t slink around alone,” Rhodes sneered. 

“Let the mudblood be, Rhodes,” Avery sighed. 

Granger took Avery’s nod as a dismissal and scurried up the stairs.

Later, Liam went with Yaxley and peered around. It was a dead-end hallway at the bottom of the stairs, darker and danker than most, but the classrooms were dry, and it was very quiet.

As the Christmas holidays rapidly approached, Liam couldn’t help but notice the mudblood act strange. She was going home, back to her _muggle_ parents. The younger Slytherins were prone to making snide remarks that maybe she ought to stay there, with _her_ kind, but the clever little thing had mastered a deflection spell, and it was rather difficult to agree that she didn’t belong when hexes just kept sliding off of her. Nott, head boy for a reason, wasn’t even sure what spell it was, but deflection spells weren’t easily learned by third years, much less a first-year taught by stuttering Professor Quirrell.

Her magic had always been impressive for a mudblood and a first year. But since November had come, it seemed to grow potent, for lack of a better word. Slytherin was in the lead for the House Cup by over a hundred points because the mudblood kept astonishing teachers with how fast she mastered spellwork. 

Liam had even noticed the Malfoy heir regarding her with narrowed grey eyes. If Draco Malfoy chose to make overtures to the mudblood, her position in Slytherin would excel past many of the 2nd – 4th years, almost all of whom were lesser houses or half-bloods. And even if Malfoy did not, at the rate her magic was expanding, she would hold her own in another five years anyway. Slytherin did not ignore the powerful.

But she had been acting odd. Quieter than ever, in fact, despite her growing power and skills. As easily as she deflected the clumsy spellwork of her peers, taunts and jeers had less of an impact on her than ever. There was a delight in her eyes that Liam couldn’t quite imagine the source of and a fervor to her study.

“Do you ever wonder why Granger ended up in Slytherin?”

Liam and Agartha Avery had grown up in the same area, a rare occasion in which two ancient noble houses had lands flush with one another. Avery, a year older than him, had been a childhood crush for a heartbeat before circumstances had forced Liam to grow up quickly. Still, a year apart, they had stayed familiar and close.

“Ambition,” Agartha answered in a heartbeat, raising a brow as if to ask why Liam was even thinking of the mudblood. 

The girl in question was missing from the common room again, as she had been every single night since mid-November, but it was still an hour before curfew, and Granger had yet to miss curfew. Liam knew she wasn’t in the library, though, and she wouldn’t be invited to any of the other nooks and crannies Slytherins used to study.

“Ambition alone isn’t enough to pull a mudblood into Slytherin,” Liam countered. “Plenty of them are ambitious.”

“She’s tenacious,” interjected Serena Selwyn with a wry smile. The eldest Selwyn was also the 7th year female Prefect. She wasn’t particularly pretty, but her gentle disposition and unassuming intellect were charming. She had been engaged to the Parkinson heir from birth, but recently the engagement had been broken off, and word had it her parents were looking at some of the lesser houses. 

The murmurs suggested there had been concerns about tying the Selwyn and Parkinson lines a little too close together. Not every house concerned themselves with such matters, but more and more, since the Ancient House of Black had been brought so low, and Jason Yaxley was only another example of what was important to avoid.

The Selwyn, Avery, and Rosier families were not particularly close. The Selwyn line tended to produce light magical cores, and Serena and her two cousins were the first Selwyns in Slytherin in over a hundred years.

“She’s tenacious, but you could say the same about any Gryffindor,” Liam argued.

“I don’t know what you expect,” chuckled Agartha. “She _is_ ambitious, though. She is reaching for something, anyone can see it.”

“I’ve wondered,” Serena told Agartha directly. “Because it is obvious. What was it that made the Sorting Hat decide _Slytherin_ was the best place for her to achieve her goals?”

It was a good question. Liam knew that Granger enjoyed knowing things, but the ambition to _know_ was a Ravenclaw inclination, not a Slytherin one.

“I don’t think we have any way of even speculating,” Agartha finally decided, dismissing the thought as easily as she’d considered it. “Unless you plan on sitting down and getting to know her, of course.”

Liam snorted. If, by the time he was in the Seventh Year, Granger had proven herself to be consistently worthwhile, he would review the subject. Until then, he had no intention of giving her an easy time of it. She was still a mudblood. Maybe she couldn’t help the fact that she’d been born with magic, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t an eyesore. Being where she didn’t belong, risking their entire world and their power every time she went home for the holidays.

And what would she do when she graduated? The same thing most mudbloods did. She would try to find a job where she could impose muggle practices into wizarding life, call them improvements, fail, and return to the muggle world, where she’d use magic where it was convenient and no more. She’d marry a muggle and produce a weak half-blood litter, and when those children went to Hogwarts, she’d probably complain about – well, there weren’t any traditions left to take out of the school curriculum, but Liam knew even as he sat there contemplating how much mudbloods had taken away already, there was a petition passing into the Ministry to reduce the curriculum of Defense Against the Dark Arts. 

It wasn’t acceptable, parents were saying, to have such archaic sensibilities: why were their children being taught defensive and offensive magic at all? Reducing it to theory was one proposal. Removing the course entirely and making Care of Magical Creatures a more encompassing class such that defense against aggressive magical creatures was the main focus was the more popular proposal. Neither idea was very popular in the Wizenamagot, but Dumbledore had brought the issue to the law from the parents. The law, in turn, had to consider it.

There were other political motives, of course. It was hard to fight for what you believed in if you didn’t know how to fight.

“You’ve gone off somewhere, Rosier,” Agartha interrupted his thoughts with a light stinging hex and a dry interjection. “What were you thinking about?”

“Mudbloods,” Liam admitted. “Just wondering what sort of toss-pot shite ours will decide to impose once she’s graduated and married a muggle, producing squeamish half-bloods and protesting broomsticks.”

“I won’t marry a muggle,” a voice said, surprisingly strident.

Granger flushed as the conversation in the common room ebbed at her protest, but she squared her shoulders and glared at Liam. Books were clutched to her chest, and she had clearly just happened to walk in. “I won’t,” she repeated.

Liam sat up, effectively looking down at her. Certainly, most of the common room was. “That’s what a lot of mudbloods say,” he told her, sneering. “But you just can’t help yourself, once you realize we don’t want your muggle influences. You go back home, marry some mundane man who _accepts you for who you are_ , force the Ministry to hire yet another Obliviator squad to manage the accidental magic your children wreak havoc with.”

Granger actually jutted her chin out. “You don’t know anything about me,” she hissed, and Liam was surprised at just how willing to stand up to him she was - this was a far cry from the caution she had displayed even a month and a half ago. “But if you think I would go back to living in a world without magic, that I would be able to stand living with someone who couldn’t comprehend a living part of my _body_ , you’re _wrong_.”

She stomped off.

Someone sent a hex at her back, and Liam was stunned to watch the magic visibly spark against her, as though it had struck a shield.

The common room burst into noise.

“Perhaps,” Agartha told Liam delicately, “we ought to try a little experiment.”

Liam, feeling a little flushed, glared at her. “What?”

“Mudbloods don’t often end up in Slytherin, and they never flourish,” Agartha smirked. “But that one is thirsty for knowledge, and maybe we don’t like to say it out loud, but she’s clever.”

“What is your point, Avery?”

Renigald sounded as short-tempered as Liam felt. It was his brother’s fiance, after all, and Agartha and Marcus Nott were far more certain to marry then most of the engagements that were appraised by families while the children were still in school. The Notts would not be tolerant if Agartha had inappropriate sensibilities concerning mudbloods – her own family wouldn’t be very tolerant.

Agartha regarded Renigald with hooded eyes. “Let us push the mudblood in the direction of a worthwhile history. Show her what mudbloods normally do. If ever there was a mudblood to be sympathetic to our traditions, I suspect it would be that one.”

Renigald appeared to relax, leaning back into his armchair and tapping its arm. “You mean to purposefully exert influence on a mudblood, such that she feels a part of us.”

Agartha hummed. “Maybe, maybe not. All I am saying, Nott, is that she seems more inclined to digest information then spit it out. But who else would provide her with the information?”

Liam snorted, finally seeing Agartha’s point. “No one.”

“Exactly,” Agartha smiled coldly. “And if something beneficial does come of it, the better for us. If nothing does, all that can be said is we were exceptionally generous.”

“I’ll take that to mean that you’re volunteering,” Liam smirked back at Agartha. But she only continued to smile at him. 

“Don’t be a coward, Rosier. I’m not suggesting it because I don’t think it has promise.”

Liam scowled at her.

Agartha had meant every word. Serena Selwyn was probably curious out of some gentlehearted misguidance, but Agartha had initially invested time in observing the mudblood because she was a prefect, and it was her job to make sure that Slytherin as a house remained protected from the harsh prejudices outside of it. The mudblood needed to integrate a certain amount to keep backlash from reaching Slytherin, and that was the end of it.

She’d been pleasantly surprised. The last mudblood had been a quivering wreck of a Sixth-year when Agartha had come to Hogwarts, and she’d heard other stories of the rare mudblood that ended up in Slytherin. Granger was not only a fairly impressive eleven-year-old, but she also had a strength of character that helped her muster through the worst of internal Slytherin defenses and the prejudices of the rest of Hogwarts.

Agartha had begun to feel a more keen interest the day the papers had released the full story of Harry Potter’s death: Granger had sought to understand _them_ , had understood that whatever she had known to be real as a muggle was different as a wizard. Why was Cremation so horrible for a wizard? And what had she wondered when Agartha had revealed the answer? Why the information wasn’t available. And she hadn’t defended muggles when Agartha had answered – she hadn’t questioned the very actual reality of what was lost when a wizard was disconnected from Magic.

And then November had come, and Granger had grown, for lack of a better term. Rapidly, stunningly. Her deflection of spells was something many adult wizards failed ever to accomplish. If Slytherin’s harsh way of treating her had helped develop that skill, Agartha would not apologize. 

Agartha wrote to her mother the morning after her challenge to Rosier and requested a book from the family library. _The Invasive Muggleborn_ had been written during the first war and hadn’t ever been circulated successfully, but it had been legally published, and the author had done a decent job of alluding to why but not explicitly expressing the opinion that mudbloods were a plague to wizarding tradition. She also requested two of her study books be sent along. The law books were expected of noble heirs and heiresses to at least retain basic information from, and Agartha was familiar with which volumes contained the most examples of muggle influence in wizarding culture in the past two hundred years.

Nott and Rosier gave her skeptical glances when the package arrived from her mother a day later but held their tongues.

What was most surprising was how difficult it was to find Granger. Agartha had begun by going to the library, books in hand. When that failed, she went down the stairwell by the courtyard. Granger had been seen coming out of it a few more times since that first afternoon, though whenever they thought to look for her there, she was never to be found.

Such was the same in this case. The classrooms were empty. 

Agartha frowned and debated waiting. It was Saturday, and she wanted to introduce Granger to the topics carefully and without interruption or interference. The common room would be unsuitable, and the library wasn’t much better.

Wherever Granger was, she was alone, and that’s where Agartha needed her to be.

Not quite irritated enough to give up, Agartha headed back to the main floor.

It was to her pleasant surprise that Yaxley was speaking to Marcus Flint in the main courtyard. 

“Yaxley,” she called. The seventh-year smiled at her. Marcus Flint attempted something of a leer, gripping his broomstick. Just off the quidditch pitch, then, even better. She waited until she was directly beside them to speak, not wanting to be overheard by the rest of the quidditch players filtering from the locker rooms, or the other scattering of students making their way through the entrance hall, some from Hogsmeade, others from enjoying the light smattering of snow. 

“Have you seen Granger?” Agartha asked.

Yaxley’s brow furrowed a negative.

As she had hoped, however, Flint had just been in the Quidditch pitch, which meant he’d had a bird’s eye view of most of the grounds.

“Mudblood was wandering down towards the Black Lake earlier,” Flint told her. “No one else down there,” he added churlishly, which was as close to an ‘I kept an eye on her’ as Agartha could hope from any of the brutes on the quidditch team.

“Good that you made sure of that,” Agartha told him in a clipped voice. She had no love of Flint, who was not particularly bright nor particularly powerful. The Flints were old and pure of line, but the last powerful Flint had died out before Grindlewald’s rise, and every generation since had been worst then the last. 

Flint’s leer turned into a proper sneer. Agartha gave Yaxley a respectful bob before turning her heel to head for the lake.

The snow was more of a sprinkle of white on the grounds, but plenty of 1st and 2nd years were scattered over the grounds near the greenhouses, throwing poor excuses for snowballs. Flint had been correct, though, the lakeshore and the muddy terrain around it was empty.

Agartha huffed and drew her cloak tighter around her as she made her way down the embankment where it sloped gently. It was too isolated down here, she decided as she began to walk the shoreline. Too easy for overeager children to attack a lone mudblood.

Assuming they saw her, Agartha corrected. She was nearing where the lakeshore flushed against the Forbidden Forest, and Agartha didn’t think Granger had sought so much privacy that she felt the need to risk her life.

She was about to turn back when she finally caught sight of the familiar bushy head of hair.

Agartha made to call out, and then paused, voice caught in her throat.

Granger had been out of sight, crouching down, but now she was standing up. She was holding a snake, a very large snake, and crooning at it.

She was wrapping it around her shoulders like a cloak.

She turned, and brown eyes met Agartha’s and went wide.

“A-Avery.”

The snake sitting on her slender shoulders wound itself more secure and let its chin rest on its coils. It regarded Agartha with a flick of its forked tongue.

Agartha clutched her books tighter to her chest in an unknown mirror of Granger’s commonplace pose and drifted forward.

Granger had taken a hand and was stroking the head of the boa with it. There was a second snake wrapped around her wrist like a bracelet.

“I was looking for you,” Agartha heard herself say. “I thought you would want to know more.” The boa was still looking at her closely. It was studying her; she was certain. 

It lifted its head and nudged Granger’s ear with its blunt nose as if telling her something. 

Agartha had never been so near an actual snake, a live snake, in her life. 

“Know more?” Granger seemed to get over her initial shock at having been approached and was regarding Agartha carefully. “What about?”

“About what Rosier said,” Agartha said, eyes yet on the snake. She’d never realized how terrifying the musculature of the serpents was to witness, all those coils tensing and un-tensing to edge along Granger’s slender shoulders. “Is…”

Granger tensed, untensed, and narrowed her eyes at Agartha and then squared her shoulders. “Yes?”

“You have snakes,” Agartha finally said, at a loss.

“They’re not _mine_ ,” Granger told her, sounding scandalized. “They come to me, sometimes,” she finished, softer. 

“They _come_ to you?” Agartha demanded.

“Since I was eight,” Granger nodded. She didn’t elaborate, and Agartha realized that she wouldn’t. The mudblood was hiding something, but it didn’t matter, because serpents came to her. And like others with creature affinities, that meant Granger’s power was real, and it would continue to be real.

Agartha didn’t bother to smile. It was so much more important they do this, because if Granger had a creature affinity: if she was really so tied to magic, it was that much more likely that she had meant what she said in the common room, how she had worded it. Granger knew what so many mudbloods didn’t: that Magic was alive, vivid and connected to them, and that connection was life itself.

“Rosier wasn’t wrong,” Agartha continued forward, drawing as near to Granger as she ever had. The boa, up close, was as she had suspected; a _tuplik_ , a magical serpent. The Dark Lord’s familiar was a tuplik. This one was smaller, of course, quite a bit smaller. Nagini’s size was legendary. “Mudbloods have influenced our culture in ways that damage our connection to Magic herself.”

Granger’s gaze turned hard. “I’ve heard that. I don’t know why I was born with magic.”

“No one does,” Agartha agreed, keeping her voice level. “Maybe it’s meant to be. Maybe it’s a mistake. We’re not persecuting you for something you didn’t control,” she chose her words carefully. Some families believed muggle-borns stole their magic, however inadvertently, and that it could be taken back: Flint; Lestrange; Gourd. “But muggle-borns do have… tendencies.” She held up her books. “Precedences. I thought you might like to understand where Rosier was coming from.”

“Why?” Granger demanded. “What do you care if I think you’re justified or not?”

“Because you’re quick on your feet,” Agartha acknowledged with a snap. “I think you’ll see the actual problem. That makes you rare, Granger,” she smirked as the girl’s eyes widened at the use of her last name. Unless a teacher was around, the older Slytherins especially referred to Granger as mudblood without prejudice. 

“That makes you valuable,” she added.

Granger’s eyes narrowed, and Agartha kept her smirk. Let Granger think she was purposefully generous, but Agartha meant it. Granger _would_ be valuable. Granger had a creature affinity, for Merlin’s sake. With _snakes_.

Granger held out her hands to accept the books, and Agartha passed them over, eyeing the slender serpent wrapped around Granger’s wrist. She didn’t recognize it, but the diamond-shaped head suggested it to be venomous.

“Why haven’t we seen them?” Agartha asked tightly, drawing her hands back when the snake hissed. “Where do you hide them?”

It occurred to her, as she asked, that Agartha had seen evidence of the girl’s affinity. Shed snake skins had been found a few times in the past several months, of varying sizes. It had been odd because most Slytherins had never seen a shed snakeskin, and that they were being found in random places around the dungeons suggested the snakes were indoors, instead of outside, where wild snakes belonged.

“My bed, mostly,” Granger admitted, looking the titles over. “Sometimes, the smaller ones hide in my boot cuffs, but I don’t like to take them to class.”

“What about Parkinson and Greengrass?” Agartha demanded.

Granger peered at her and shrugged. “What do they care about them? They’re there to be with me. It’s not like they’re going to hunt down my roommates to bite them.”

Agartha supposed she had a point. “I’m heading back, then,” she said finally. “I am serious, Granger,” she purposefully used the last name again. “If you have any questions about what you read, I will answer them.” _Directly_ , she left unsaid. 

“Will Rosier?” Granger quirked her lips.

Agartha snorted. “Just be careful where you ask him.”

“I’m always careful,” muttered Granger.

Ignoring the stab of pity she felt for the younger girl, Agartha kept her mouth pressed together as they began to walk back towards the castle. She was surprised when Granger began to veer off away from the castle entrance and towards the outer walls that sat somewhat over the dungeons. Granger paused, studied Agartha, and then gestured. “You’re trusting me,” she explained. 

_I’m returning the favor_ , she had meant, Agartha realized. Granger had a way into the castle that allowed her to sneak snakes in and out. A small alcove in the stone, slightly shielded further from notice by a tree. Granger looked at Agartha pointedly, hesitated, took Agartha’s hand, and walked into the wall before Agartha could jerk away.

They were in pitch blackness a second later.

“Don’t worry,” Granger’s voice echoed a bit, and it was only a few stumbling steps until they were in a hallway of some kind. A bob of light burst from Granger’s direction. Agartha clamped her mouth shut at the wandless and silent _lumos_. It was clear Granger had no idea what that sort of thing indicated. 

It was the hallway that dead-ended. Only, this one had no stairwell leading up from it, Agartha realized.

“What is this?” She asked.

“I’m not really sure,” Granger admitted. “I found it by accident. Follow me.”

They went past two doors and then into a classroom. 

“It’s very particular,” Granger explained to Agartha, leading her back through the classroom through the back door that they had passed in the hallway outside. “But, you have to go through this exact way.”

Agartha arched a brow but followed.

Granger was not wrong. Upon exiting the class room’s back door, the hallway had a stairwell once again, light barely reaching the bottom.

“A little pocket dimension of some kind,” Granger shrugged. She nudged the snake on her shoulders. “I’ll see you back at the dorm,” she told it.

“You don’t carry them,” Agartha realized.

“Of course not,” Granger looked at her.

“You should,” Agartha said before she could censor herself. “In Slytherin.”

Granger hesitantly held up a hand to let the tuplik headbutt. “I will defend what it means to me,” she told Agartha squarely. _I will defend the secret behind it_ , she meant.

“Creature attraction is a very defining skill,” Agartha said directly. 

Granger bit her lip and considered.

Agartha was not expecting Granger to direct the tuplik to unwind. “I’ll meet you back at the dorm,” she told it a second time, and the tuplik moved horrendously fast, its bulky form vanishing into shadow and crag faster than she could follow.

“I have other merits,” Granger announced to Agartha.

And a very special one that would topple any balancing act in her favor. Agartha gave Granger a slow, appreciative smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is worth mentioning a second time that Grammarly absolutely despises any and all writing styles in this story.


	4. The Maiden, in Her Splendor, Reaching

Hermione was unsurprised to return to Hogwarts after Winter Holidays to find that His presence was gone. The tuplik had been His gift to her, she suspected. She had not hidden well from Him, her isolation and ostracization. Hermione did not name the snakes that came to her, usually, because they were not permanent fixtures. They came and went and were no more her pets than her dormmates were her friends.

But the tuplik was a companion, a gift, and a constant. Hermione offered the name Hildr, and the tuplik accepted in the magnanimous way of serpents. Hildr slept on her pillow during the day and vanished to hunt any hour she pleased. She ruled over the other snakes that came to Hermione, and when Hermione spoke to her, Hildr understood, even if the snake had no way to respond that Hermione could understand.

Hermione hadn’t been certain what Agartha Avery would do with the new-found knowledge of Hermione’s tendency to collect snakes. She knew that the month and a half of her boy’s presence, their time spent tangling the theory of witchcraft and wizardry with His easy and open power, had caused her apparent power and skill to explode. She knew that it had increased the interest in her potential.

Nothing made that more evident than Avery reaching out to her in the first place, offering her knowledge.

Avery, however, did something incredibly Slytherin. She began treating Hermione with obvious deference – which at first had stunned Hermione. Avery didn’t deign to explain herself to her peers, either, and the result was the implication that she knew something about Hermione that the others did not. 

It was true, of course. And because the majority of Slytherins were cautious when it came to turning their backs on power, the majority also began to treat Hermione differently. Not with the deference of Avery, but the older years kept closer eyes on Hermione and kept their mouths shut and their wands away. The younger years were less thoughtful. Only her year mates, all of them with similar upbringings to Avery, took real care in how they treated her.

It was a little weird, to be honest. 

The first time Parkinson asked her for help studying, Hermione thought she might’ve misheard.

It wasn’t as though Hermione suddenly had friends, but Malfoy, Nott, Parkinson, Greengrass; they were suddenly paying her heed and inviting her to spend time with them. Infrequently, for a few hours on the weekend or before a quiz. But it was not the total isolation of before, either.

Avery appeared content to lord her hidden knowledge of Hermione over her peers, and Hermione suspected that would be enough for the time being.

Hermione made sure to accept the overtures from her peers without investing too heavily in them. If invited, she appeared. If unapproached, she went about her business as usual. It was easy enough.

She began the dive into Avery’s gifts almost immediately, taking care to let the older years see her with the books a few times a week. Hermione had been hopeful that Rosier had been dramatic, a byproduct of a bigoted upbringing.

The truth was that they had a point. Muggleborns had a habit of disruption, starting in the fifteen hundreds when the muggle nobles had wrested power from the muggle monarchy. Wizards had already had a fairly established culture by then, Hogwarts having been established almost five hundred years prior, and muggleborns had been adopted into families before being schooled at Hogwarts. Before Hogwarts, it was a matter of chance whether or not they joined the magical community. But muggleborns hadn’t trodden on tradition until the late eighteen hundreds. 

The Statute of Secrecy had been signed in 1692 because of Muggleborns. Because of Muggleborns, the restructuring of the Council of Wizards had resembled the muggle government, with the Wizengamot, the Ministry of Magic, and the Minister. The restructuring had taken some power from the Noble Twenty-Eight, but not as much as the 1900s would. Then, more and more houses were forced by law to give up their rituals and magical affinities as the practices affiliated with them were called into question by muggleborns.

It wasn’t _just_ muggleborns, Hermione thought. It was politicians using muggleborn influence as an excuse to limit the powers of their opponents. She was disturbed to see that Dumbledore had been active in this way against many of the names belonging to her dormmates since Grindlewald’s fall. The rest was the application of bureaucracy, the destruction of active tradition.

The vitriol of Rosier wasn’t without warrant either. The statistics in the _Invasive Muggleborn_ were pulled from Ministry Census data and showed that a large percentage of muggleborns had, following the abolishment of the practice of adopting muggleborns, spent five to ten years after Hogwarts in the wizarding world before falling back to their muggle upbringings. A disproportionate number of muggleborns married muggles, and this did burden the Ministry with expanding their enforcement of the Statute of Secrecy proportionally.

It was a mess.

Hermione went to Rosier with her question. It was a moment of impulse, seeing him walking alone while she was on her way to the Common Room from the library. “Rosier,” she hurried to catch up with him. 

Rosier gave her a small nod of acknowledgment. “What is it, mudblood?” The insult was almost fond.

Hermione barely noticed the slight anymore; it was so common that she was addressed as such when there was no chance of anyone getting in trouble for it. “The books Avery lent me cut off in 1984. What’s the worst thing in the Wizengamot right now? Hogwarts doesn’t have any law books,” she added, disapprovingly.

“Of course not,” Liam snorted. “Let me give you a hint, mudblood. The current trend is to remove capability. I won’t insult you,” he added a little gentler, “by claiming the muggleborns are pushing the laws through alone, but the claim is that wizards are behind the times by still teaching their young how to fight. So they want to take defense and offensive spellwork out of the curriculum.”

Hermione drew her brows together. It wasn’t an unreasonable argument. 

Except:

“Muggles in Britain make fun of muggles in America because they’re so aggressive. It’s sort of a result of how the world wars played out,” she told Rosier conversationally. “The Americans are always actively building their military, even though they’re not fighting anyone at the moment. And you know, even in muggle Britain, they recruit the 17 and 18-year-olds into military service, and they’ll try a bit earlier to introduce them to the culture – but it's all voluntary. There are no classes on how to use a handgun or a knife for an eleven-year-old. The closest they have is physical activity classes or clubs for martial arts. That’s more of a hobby thing, though,” she allowed.

“So they lie,” Rosier snorted. “Acting like the world isn’t a dangerous place doesn’t make it less dangerous. But you know what the real problem is? It isn’t how dangerous the world is; it is that magic is a living thing, mudblood. It is volatile. In the 1500s, there were magical storms, and it was the job of families like mine to wrestle against the raw magic, to be a part of it. Now there are no magical storms, and I wouldn’t be able to stand within one even if I wanted to. Magic isn’t safe, but it is our entire life, our history. Those that are trying to make it safer are essentially killing it,” Liam ended with a low hiss.

Liam was gratified to see that the mudblood was suppressing her uncertainty for the necessity of assimilation. She was taking in his words with care. 

“I love my parents,” she said. Liam frowned at the nonsequitur. The mudblood had her brows drawn together, and her brown eyes were staring at the passing flagstones with mulish uncertainty. “But when I think of everything I could have learned if a wizarding family had been allowed to adopt me – all the things Avery’s books mention so casually, you know, that have gotten pushed out of practice. They’re near impossible to find information on in the Hogwarts library.”

Liam, yet again caught a little by surprise, found himself offering reassurance. “Dumbledore has full authority over what goes in and out of the Hogwarts library. It may still be the _biggest_ collection in Britain, but there are plenty of more varied libraries around the world. Any family library will have the information you’re looking for.”

The mudblood snorted. “Like I’ll ever be allowed to see the inside of one of those,” Hermione sneered. “Liapolis,” she told the entrance to the common room. She slipped through in a huff. Liam followed, allowing the natural cutoff to the conversation.

The mudblood had a point, and he supposed that was the same point Avery had been trying to make. Here was a muggleborn who was willing to listen, and yet the biases against her would ensure she never had a chance to grasp the truth of what they told her.

Hildr had her quirks. Hermione could not speak to the tuplik, but Hildr seemed to understand English enough to know not only when Hermione was upset or happy or stressed, but the cause. Hildr was almost motherly, always quick to mind Hermione’s desire that her affinity for snakes not be known.

Snakes, for the most part, were incredibly lazy with an overblown sense of entitlement. The nonmagical snakes that flocked to Hermione sought warmth and left when they were hungry. An increasing number of them came back because Hermione always went out of her way to will her bed warm while she was in classes. When they fed, they became overwhelmed by instincts that made them superior hunters.

The magical serpents, the few that Hermione interacted with, were incredibly clever by comparison. 

They held conversations that extended far beyond the three critical topics of hunger, warmth, and the uncomfortable sensation of shedding. Hildr, Hermione suspected, was twice as clever as the rest. Had Hermione been able to converse with her, the serpent probably would have discussed magical theory and ancient history with Hermione. 

Hermione thought this because of the evidence: if Hermione kept up a rambling dialogue (at first, she had felt slightly insane, talking to an empty classroom with a snake on her shoulders), Hildr would react when she had input. Like the time Hermione had not been able to remember where she had read a passage, and Hildr had nosed the correct book to her. Or the times she had been practicing spells and Hildr would wind her large body around Hermione, tensing and flexing Hermione’s limbs until her posture was better. And of course, not a single dormmate had seen sight of the admittedly large serpent, and the number of times a snakeskin was found in the Slytherin dormitories returned to zero, where it had been before Hermione had started Hogwarts.

Hermione wasn’t sure how the snake knew which way to manipulate Hermione’s magic, particularly since it wasn’t always in line with what movements her books required. Regardless, Hildr was a superior companion. The tuplik did not seem to mind that she had been gifted to Hermione, rather seemed to regard her position as an honor and an obligation to be upheld.

Hildr knew before Hermione did that He was nearing again. Hermione’s first clue came from the decrease in companions, and then, a short while later, that gentle tug on her heartstrings. 

It was edging into late February, and Hermione had been hoping He would come again before Summer. Her parents intended to take her abroad. Although Hermione did love the chance to travel and the time with her parents, it was always too long between His visits, and He’d hardly be able to find her in a different village in France every week.

Once again, she could barely contain her excitement. This time, however, Hermione had more tools to slip away: she and Hildr had established a system of warning when Hermione traversed the castle that ensured Hermione knew when she needed to duck inside a classroom or alcove. Hermione’s mouse-likening was stronger with her magic, and no one looked up when she slipped out the entrance of the common room.

Even so, Hermione was unhappy to realize Agartha Avery watched her slip across the lawns as the moon sat high in the sky. 

The Slytherin prefect would not betray Hermione this night, perhaps. Hermione was not exactly capable of holding her own against Avery politically, and at some point, Hermione suspected Avery would do more than watching her from a window.

But the older Slytherin did not follow her, and Hermione and Hildr crossed into the forest.

He was not waiting for her at the edge of the forest. Hermione furrowed her brow and followed the echo in her heartbeat. It was nervewracking the further in she went. Only Hildr draped over her shoulders made Hermione fear the dark a little less. 

Still, the call came without sight of Him. The trees now hid the moon and its light, so Hermione summoned light to her palms. It lit the way only enough to prevent tripping over roots. Twice, she heard strange sounds in the distance. Up, Hermione looked, to find the trees had become large and old.

Hermione clamped her lips over a shriek as she rounded a tree trunk to find Him.

He haunched over the centaur foal, the gangly body not yet stiff. The rent corpse left sharp scents blossoming, and Hermione swallowed her nausea, making herself small against the roots of the great tree into which she had stumbled. The dim light from her palm cast wicked shadows over the glistening entrails that disguised themselves as tree roots.

He finished His meal and immediately lit His terrible eyes in her direction. “I-O-E,” He rumbled, voice thick with His satiated hunger.

Hermione gave Him a small smile and delicately toed around parts of an organ that had landed far from the body. She presented Him her hand proudly, and into His mouth He took the limb, gentle as always in His greeting. His talons had grown sharper and scraped her flesh without intent. Hermione did not notice.

“I have missed you,” she flung her arms around Him. He returned the embrace. Blood was left to streak over her cloak. “Exams are coming up, so I have so much to prepare for!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the wonderful comments and the kudos, I am glad people are not turned off by the oddity of the fic or its style. There was a short delay wherein I was distracted by thirty-some pages of words that needed vomiting into a Transformers fic. When Transformers calls, I gotta get all the frames, servos, derma and glossa out of my vocabulary before I can go back to writing anything else. We're all good now, and I am back to writing Birdcages and Growth. <3


	5. In the Maiden's Mouth, a Serpent Coils

The spring air, crisp and sweet, hurried Hermione forward. This night, she did not have Hildr with her; the serpent had gone on a hunt and was no doubt lazing, fat and happy, underneath Hermione’s bed. It was late, as she scurried back to the castle. Agartha had been giving her more attention, lately, and would know that Hermione had been out long past curfew. In some ways, her new minder was a godsend: Agartha had opened Hermione’s young eyes to so many injustices done in the name of justice. In others, being singled out was a frustrating containment.

Whispers hissed, and footsteps echoed. Hermione rushed to duck behind a statue. Three of the 1st year Gryffindor boys rushed past, looking excited and gravely incautious as they hurried, hopefully back to their dorm room.

Hermione waited for a second longer after they had turned a corner of the long first-floor corridor and turned towards the dungeons. The boys must have come from the grounds to have entered the castle so close to the dungeons. Or perhaps they were making an ill-advised attempt to prank the potions classroom. Hermione resolved to put it out of her mind.

Draco Malfoy rounded the same corner from which the Gryffindor boys had come. He slunk quickly from shadow to shadow, looking ridiculous as he did so. He was a great deal quieter than the Gryffindors had been.

But he should not have been going that way, Hermione realized. Draco had passed the stairs to the dungeon, back the other way. She scurried after him.

He was following the Gryffindors up. With a huff, Hermione swiveled on her heel to follow him. Up the gentle incline of the main corridor towards the stairs and the Great Hall. Then up the stairwells. Hermione made it up one set of stairs before she realized there was a dim glow coming up from one of the hallways below her: Filch.

Doubling her pace as it was clear the Caretaker had caught the scent of errant students, Hermione skipped the last step and caught the edge of Draco’s cloak just as he made to duck into a passageway.

“Malfoy,” she hissed, and Draco Malfoy let lose a stifled shriek.

Hermione covered his mouth and just as quickly released it. Draco looked as disgusted as she felt. She pointed down where Filch’s light was growing brighter as he came up the stairs, muttering.

“ _Muffiliato_ ,” Hermione whispered, and Draco’s eyes widened. A flush scattered over his cheeks, either because he hadn’t thought of it himself or because it was a tricky spell for a 1st year.

Hermione tiptoed back further and ran into a door. Draco pressed himself against the door next to her, shaking. Both of them looked around for a way to hide. The short corridor had no armor, tapestries, or alcoves.

The light of Filch’s lantern swung about as he crested the stairs. He immediately rounded the turn to head up the next flight, and Hermione’s heart soared. He had probably assumed, as any sensible person would, that with the amount of noise and direction, the students he was looking for were Gryffindors.

He continued up, and Draco expelled a high gust of air slowly.

“Mrow?”

Hermione flinched so hard it hurt. 

Mrs. Norris, Filch’s bedraggled tabby, looked up at them with a curious, sly look. Her tail twitched.

“What is it, my sweet?” Filch’s distant voice had turned around, now two flights above them.

Draco turned and cast the unlocking charm on the door against which they had been pressed. Hermione yanked it open as they moved with sudden harmony, unhooking his cloak as it got caught on the handle. She threw the door shut behind them, stopping at the last second to avoid a thud. It sort of worked. The door had creaked but had closed with the softest of clicks.

She and Draco slid against the door to the floor. Hermione’s hand over her mouth, despite the muffling charm, and Draco with his head tucked against his knees.

They waited, the seconds ticking by in agony.

With a solid wood door, it was hard to hear the muffled sound of Filch approaching. The door handle wiggled half-heartedly, but it was a solid door and must have locked behind them because it quickly stopped. “Must’ve slipped away, Mrs. Norris. Come along, those Gryffindors are sure…”

Filch’s voice faded, and Draco let out a second great sigh, this one covered by his cloak.

He raised his head and knocked his head against the door gently. They waited in silent consensus for several moments.

“Thank Merlin,” Hermione breathed at last. 

“Thank Merlin,” scowled Draco. “What are you on about Granger? It’s your bloody fault he almost caught me!” He had the good sense to keep his voice low, his pointy features distorted in a fury.

“He was following the Gryffindors, you idiot,” Hermione hissed back crossly. “And you didn’t even notice he was behind you coming up the stairs. Be grateful!”

“To a mudblood?” Draco scoffed, but his features had softened quickly to mild discomfit.

“To a mudblood,” Hermione growled.

She was not the only thing growling.

Something slick slid onto Draco’s shoulder. He looked at it, clearly disgusted, and then trailed his pale grey eyes up over Hermione’s head. Hermione followed his gaze.

Above them, a great dog’s head, with teeth the size of wands glistening, had opened its mouth.

The breath stank.

Hermione covered Draco’s mouth before the scream got started. She summoned her light with her free hand and found herself staring at three heads, each the size of the first—a Cerebus.

Hermione couldn’t carry a tune, so Hogwart’s school song came out a beautiful mess as she hummed it, gasping between stanzas. It wasn’t particularly pretty, and for a minute, Hermione thought it was too late, and they were dead.

Behind her hand, Draco had also started humming. He couldn’t carry a tune either, but he was calmer, and Hermione slowed the song.

The Cerebus’ eyes, the three that Hermione could see, began to droop.

She carefully removed her hand from Draco’s mouth and stepped back towards the door. Still humming, she patted the wood with her hand. The handle met her fingers, cold metal.

The Cerebus had laid down with a whump. Hermione didn’t wait for it to snore – she stopped humming and ducked around the barely open door.

Draco was fast behind her.

They scuttled in total silence back down the stairs. There was no sign of Filch, and Hermione hoped he had continued up, all the way to Gryffindor tower. Into the dungeons, she and Draco hurried and made it into the common room, gasping.

The entirety of the fifth through seventh years were still awake despite the late hour, the common room fire roaring. The collective of fifteen sets of eyes landed on Hermione and Draco.

“Something the matter?” Renigald Nott asked mildly. “Surely the great Malfoy heir has not got himself into trouble?”

Draco bristled, perhaps because Renigald hadn’t referred to Hermione instead. Hermione, it was well-known thanks to Agartha, had been slipping quiet-like out of the castle for months without any issue.

“No, sir,” Hermione said, straightening herself simultaneously with Draco. A few of the older years had already relaxed and now merely looked amused. “We were just amusing ourselves.”

“Perhaps a more dignified pursuit, next time,” Renigald suggested, expression sliding from impassive to disinterested with a side of disgust.

“Of course,” Hermione bobbed in a half-curtsey and grabbed Draco’s shoulder through his cloak. His mouth had opened, perhaps to explain or get upset with the dismissive older years. Hermione missed the amusement of the group behind them as she managed to get Draco into the hallway that led to the dormitories. 

“That is disgusting,” she informed Draco, jutting her chin at the giant dog drool still on his cloak shoulder. Draco, who had left his disarmed, wide-eyed glare on his face as he was dragged, now looked equally disgusted. “Go take a bath, go to sleep, and for Merlin’s sake, don’t be so stupid,” Hermione was tugging his cloak off while Draco tried to help and simultaneously listen enough to get incensed. “They’re Gryffindors, Malfoy, they get themselves into trouble without your help.”

“The Gamekeeper has a _dragon_ ,” Draco stressed, apparently finding his voice as he yanked himself out of Hermione’s grasp, at last free of his cloak. He wadded it up aggressively. “A bit more than Gryffindors are going to get into trouble.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Then they can get him into trouble too. Tell Professor Snape, leave off how you found out, and let _him_ deal with it. Honestly, Malfoy, what are you going to do, duel all three of them with levitation spells?”

“Oh shut up,” Draco hissed back, narrowing his eyes. “I don’t see you apologizing for being out after curfew.”

“Because I was _quiet_ ,” Hermione emphasized, narrowing hers back at him. “And used _magic_ to keep quiet. And I didn’t almost get bloody caught because I forgot to watch out for the bloody Caretaker!”

“Malfoy, mudblood,” a bemused voice said from the entrance of the hallway. Liam Rosier leaned against the wall casually, flicking his wand idly between his fingers. “If you’re not in your dormitories in the next ten minutes, I will be using my wand.”

Hermione, perhaps high on talking back to Draco, harumphed. “As if you could,” she huffed, turning on her heel. She marched into the girl’s showers without looking back.

Draco had turned to watch her go with wide eyes. 

“Malfoy,” Liam repeated.

“Are you really going to let her talk to you like that?” Draco asked, forgetting himself.

“Can you deflect spells as she can?” Liam countered.

Draco could not, and sputtered as he turned red. He scowled at Liam, pursed his lips until they went white, and marched into the boy’s showers as flustered as Hermione had been.

Liam stayed at the entrance to the empty hallway for a moment. He had not intended to tip his hand that far, but the mudblood was not who she had been at the start of the year. Agartha had made it clear that there were habits worth breaking, for Hermione Granger. Liam didn’t know what Agartha knew, but there was evidence to suggest Agartha was right regardless. The mudblood wasn’t wrong, after all. Liam wouldn’t have been able to hex her, not with that odd ability she’d developed to deflect harmful spells.

One week after their adventure, Hermione was sitting in the library. The library’s fifth level was poorly lit, one level above the reach of the windows, and filled with subjects that weren’t needed in any Hogwarts classes. Hermione used it rarely, preferring her damp basement classroom with its secret escape. The upper years were in the close-by courtyard, however, and Hermione had been avoiding them outside the common room since that night.

It wasn’t that she thought Liam intended to try to hex her. He would have already if he meant to get back at her. It was just that… he had been looking at her funny. Agartha had been nigh overbearing with her watchfulness, and now other older years were watching her too. Corbin Parkinson had even shielded her from a 2nd year Gryffindor’s stinging hex before Hermione had bothered.

It was discomforting and weird.

“Granger.”

Hermione looked up. Draco Malfoy was standing at the row of bookshelves that hid her table from the sight of the stairwell. He looked displeased to have found her, and Hermione spent several seconds in which he didn’t move or speak, trying to think of why he would have needed to be on the fifth level of the library.

“You hide away pretty well,” Draco finally continued awkwardly. He drew forward, and Hermione set her book down to stare at him. He’d been looking for her, she deduced. “I didn’t realize there were tables up here.”

“It’s quiet,” Hermione agreed. 

She was just getting ready to ask him if he needed something when he finally broke the pause, his grey eyes sliding away to stare at the corner of the table, which he began to finger. 

“I wanted to thank you,” he began, cleared his throat awkwardly, and halted. “…For the other night. You thought to hum so quickly.” He stopped again, and both he and Hermione had red cheeks. “I won’t forget it.”

Hermione, desperate to escape the awkward reality of his sincerity, leaped to the thing about which she had been trying to avoid thinking. “Why do you think its there? I mean something like that, in a school.”

Draco, equally eager to move on, grasped the change in the subject. “It was the third corridor, wasn’t it? I suppose they’re guarding something, the teachers. Or maybe the board, but my father would have told me I should think.”

Hermione kept the thought that Draco Malfoy’s father probably knew how to keep a secret from his son to herself. “It's inappropriate, in any case,” she sniffed. “And for the record, you were very quiet,” she added after a second. “Even without the _Muffiliato_.”

Draco’s chest puffed up slightly. He gave her a sharp, cordial nod. “See you around, Granger.”

Hermione rolled her eyes as he vanished back around the bookshelf. Other purebloods, in their absurd peacockery, had nothing on an eleven-year-old Draco Malfoy.

The school year concluded with Hermione studying with the First Year Slytherins almost every day of the week. Most of them had the weight of familial expectations on their shoulders for motivation. For Zabini, who didn’t, it was the competitive spirit and desire to leave the haughty Ravenclaws in second and to confirm Gryffindor as the stupidest group of idiots at Hogwarts.

Daphne was perhaps the most naturally studious of her peers, but Pansy could be remarkably focused when she wanted a good grade. Hermione found herself enjoying the group revision immensely. It was all the better when Dumbledore announced at the end of year feast that Slytherin had won the house cup. Hermione sat with the highest grade of the First Years, Draco and Pansy close seconds.

“We write each other during the summer,” Pansy informed Hermione over the final breakfast of the term. “You’ll be in France, isn’t that right?” The girl was more verbose to Hermione than usual, perhaps over-cheered to be going home. 

“That’s right,” Hermione replied cautiously. “My parents are taking me to wizarding sites around Paris and then around the country. It’s a bit tricky, of course, because I have to do all the planning.”

“How lovely,” cooed Daphne. “Be sure that you visit Sur-la-Terrasse and Mont Brouillard.” 

“My family has two estates in France,” Drago mentioned haughtily. “One is near Sur-la-Terrasse. The food there is better than in Paris.” 

The meal ended, and they returned to their dorm to pack. “Do you have an owl?” Pansy asked Hermione.

Hermione did not. “I’ve thought about it, but I can’t see the point,” Hermione replied.

“I use the school owls,” Daphne shrugged, shooting Pansy a look. “My family has several owls as is common, so I didn’t see a point of getting my own either.”

“They’re not that much trouble,” shrugged Pansy. “You feed them treats, they hunt for themselves, you leave a bowl of water somewhere in your room. Besides, Hermione hasn’t got an owlery at her house, and she’ll be in France anyhow. You should get an owl,” she surmised to Hermione. “You can use them to owl-order during the school year, but Hogwarts owls won’t go to shops unless a teacher requests it.”

“Really?” Hermione hadn’t known that restriction. An owl sounded more useful now. “I’ll look around a few pet shops and see if I find an owl I like,” she decided. Pansy preened.

Most students in the Slytherin dorms had been mostly packed the night before. The sun was still low in the sky, and the grass was covered in dew as they left the castle. It seemed as though the Slytherin dorm had sought to head to the train station all at once, lining up to enter carriages while the other houses lingered in the Great Hall or were still packing.

The older years had priority. While Hermione waited, she studied the strange skeletal horses at the head of each carriage carefully. Thestrals, her mind supplied.

“Can you see them?” Agartha had appeared at her side. Hermione started.

“I can,” she replied. “Because someone died in front of me, right?”

“That’s right,” Agartha replied, nodding to Renigald Nott as he passed them to get in a carriage. “Most of us can see them. Its tradition to sit at the bedside of ailing relatives, and most of us have seen two or three pass.”

“To give the spirit comfort in hopes that the relative shares their knowledge,” Hermione remembered. “But many students do not see them,” noted Hermione. She had already heard several students from other houses commenting on the ‘invisible horses.’

“Ravenclaws maybe,” Agartha agreed, lowering her voice. “But the pureblood households who most often get sorted into Hufflepuff or Gryffindor… they abandoned those traditions decades ago out of discomfort and fear.”

“1920,” Hermione nodded. “Brahm Smith, a descendent of Hufflepuff, declared the practice a risk to his living family’s health and begged them to leave his side empty but for a doctor. The Spanish Flu was virulent, even in the Wizarding World.”

“The knowledge lost and the discomfort of the newly dead seems a high price to pay for such fear,” Agartha replied stonily. “Have a good summer, Granger.”

The sixth-year smiled a pretty smile that Hermione had not often seen much less been the recipient of and boarded a carriage that quickly filled with Rosier, Parkinson, Rowle, and Higgs. 

Perhaps the highlight of the morning was Jason Yaxley sweeping Hermione up into a hug before he got into his carriage. He smiled his vacant smile, and Hermione enjoyed the sensation of a man hugging her, his biceps corded, and the pad of his chest warm and firm. He would go back to his family home and not leave for much, Pansy had revealed in a gossipy whisper, unless he went against his family and found a menial job with simple orders, he could follow. That was the fate of purebloods like him.

Hermione, to herself, resolved to write him.

That night, coming into their house, the Grangers found an owl perched on the back of a kitchen chair. It was a beautiful snowy owl. Mr. Granger fussed, finding it a treat as Mrs. Granger picked up the letter that had been left on the center of the table.

“Cordially,” she murmured, reading the beautiful calligraphy embossed on the envelope. “Hermione, do you know who this is from?”

Hermione leaned around her mother’s shoulder. “Not at all,” she assured. 

Mrs. Granger accepted the letter opener handed to her by Mr. Granger and slid open the envelope. “Beautiful stationery,” she commented, pulling out the letter. The parchment was heavy, thick, and a luxurious cream. An elegant hand had penned the contents, but Hermione couldn’t read them as Mrs. Granger held up the letter. 

_To Mrs. and Miss Granger,_

_Please accept this cordial invitation to afternoon tea. My son, Draco, informs me that you will be residing in Sur-la-Terrasse early in the summer. It would please me to receive you at the Malfoy Estate while you are in town. You may find us a mile outside of Sur-la-Terrasse, to the South, off of Ruelle de la Pomme. In gratitude for the kindness Miss Hermione Granger has shown my son, I wish to present this owl from our recent hatchlings. Please respond at your earliest convenience as to when I might expect your company._

_Sincerely,_

_Lady Narcissa Malfoy_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) Grammarly said: "even a knowledgeable audience may be unfamiliar with the word alcoves." I refused to change 'alcoves' to 'nooks' on behalf of all of us. 'Nooks' is a Dumbledore word, thank you very much, and I'll not have any of those sneaking around this here proper environment.  
> (2) After all this time not writing fanfiction, I still feel like I have to apologize when I don't update. I knew I should have finished this before I posted it, goshdarnit.  
> (3) Peturbment is not a word, which I think is bullshit. Peturbation? Peturbulance? Peturbalation? Peturbilifiedification? Is there a wrong way to use suffixes, I mean, really?


	6. The Long Road, the Queen's Maiden Walks with Care

Hermione tugged on her sundress. It was newly bought and twice as expensive as any dress Hermione’s mother had purchased for her daughter in the past. It fit well, but the further they walked down the charming hamlet road of Ruelle de la Pomme, the more she felt underdressed.

Sur-la-Terrasse, as a wizarding village, had no end to space hidden from the muggle world. There were many smaller cottages in the village, charmingly provincial, with spacious yards filled with chickens, kneazles, puffskeins, bicorns, and crups. They had even passed a Fwooper breeder who’s yard was mostly aviary, with fwoopers moving back and forth through the imported boughs of traditional African foliage.

The inn was equally charming, smooth rock walls forming a sprawling compound with semi-manicured lawns and the occasional gazebo. Two weddings had already occurred, and Mr. and Mrs. Granger were suitably wooed. Sur-la-Terrasse was small, but also held a sizable village hall, a café, a market, and two tailors, both of whom seemed to boast clientele from as far away as America.

Stepping just past the last cottage in either direction, however, stately mansions of extravagance owned to great acreage, a small amount available to the public for walking and communal events. Slightly further out, mansions became estates of sizeable scale. Unlike the muggle world, which had drawn away from such excess in France, most of these were still home to noble families.

Hermione had chosen Sur-la-Terrasse due to its history as a Veela Court seat. Tourism was not an industry in the wizarding world, and there weren’t brochures or guides one could pick up at the library to map a trip. She had not realized how many Veela nobles still called Sur-la-Terrasse home. She had also not expected to expose her parents to the unpleasant business of a Veela courting fight, complete with fireballs. The inn proprietor had fortunately been on his afternoon walk and had cast a shield around Mr. and Mrs. Granger and escorted them back to the inn.

Mrs. Granger had been a great deal more anxious since questioning Hermione about Hogwarts and what, if any, excitable creatures were present. Hermione had carefully only mentioned the giant squid and done her best to play down anything else her parents had picked up.

The meeting with Mrs. Narcissa Malfoy – _Lady_ Narcissa Malfoy had weighed on Hermione’s mind plenty. She had pressed upon her mother the urgency of appearance and good manner, that purebloods of the wizarding world and, in particular, Slytherin House were not unlike the nobles of Britain’s past. Fortunately, she had left out that this meeting could ruin her future as a witch. Well enough: by the time Hermione and Mrs. Granger turned onto Rue de la Pomme, her mother was concerned enough over the notion of fireball-throwing bird-women who retained titles of nobility.

A stone wall of just over one meter high had marked most of the main road outside of town, interrupted by the fancier wrought iron fence or the occasional wooden cattle-fence. The stone wall grew taller and more regimented at the corner of Rue de la Pomme until Hermione could only just see the apple trees on the other side. The orchard, they had learned from a café waiter, was owned by another noble estate, who leased the land from the Malfoys. 

The wall arched over a large wrought-iron gate, elaborate ‘M’s wound into the design. Past the gate, a sprawling drive wound into the orchard. Hermione could see through the gate that the orchard, quite large in size, grew up a hill that turned into grand lawns, at the top of which a small manor sat.

Then again, Hermione reasoned, it _was_ just a summer home.

A house-elf, slightly better dressed in a clean shift and apron than the elf which oversaw the Granger rooms at the inn, appeared just on the other side of the gate. “Bonjours,” it squeaked. 

“Hello,” Hermione told it politely. She had never seen a house-elf before their trip. She had been troubled to find that events in the elves’ very lengthy history had led to their magic being bound to servitude. Hermione had resolved to hunt for more information at Flourish and Blotts before the end of the summer. 

“I am Hermione Granger, and this is my mother, Mrs. Mary Granger. We are here to see Lady Malfoy, she is expecting us.”

“Atsy will takes you to the Lady,” the house-elf announced, and the gates swung open. Mrs. Granger gave her daughter a look, and they followed the elf. The elf skipped a fast pace down the gravel path, and the Grangers followed it in silence.

The orchards were old, but the path well kept. As they approached, the lawns were not merely grand but manicured. The manor was larger up close, but not much different than the French manors that the Grangers had already seen in the muggle world.

Atsy took them through the wide, dark wood and iron-bound front door, and into a marbled entrance hall. The entrance hall led into a very grand sitting room, through which a solarium filled with sunlight let out onto a deck.

On the deck, a filigreed patio set with gold leaf framed a woman with white-blonde hair and fine features sitting under a lace parasol.

Hermione recognized her from the train platform, even as the woman stood to the sound of Atsy, prompting the french double doors leading out to the patio to open.

Lady Narcissa Malfoy was wearing a white and green dress that might have been designed in 1910 for all of the elegant lines and tasteful lace, which gave it shape. Her hair was laced with a small bit of silver, and pinned back in complex whorls interlaced with pearls. Hermione did not doubt that the green gems dangling from her ears and interspersed with pearls on the delicate necklace around the pale neck were actual emeralds.

“Mrs. Mary Granger and Miss Hermione Granger, Missus Lady,” Atsy announced with a well-meaning bob. 

“Mrs. Granger, Miss Granger.” Lady Narcissa Malfoy spoke in a firm, genteel tone that gave no indication of her actual feelings for receiving them. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance.“ 

Hermione gave an uncomfortable bob, probably resembling Atsy a moment prior, and smoothed her sundress again. Her mother held out a hand with a soft smile. “Lady Malfoy, thank you for your invitation.”

Lady Malfoy looked down her nose at the hand and scrutinized the hand. She smiled, fine lines appearing at the very meaning of a polite smile, and took the hand gingerly. She released it quickly and gestured to the two seats on the other side of the table. “Please, sit.”

Hermione did her best to emulate the grace of their hostess as she sat and nervously smoothed her dress again. She couldn’t claim to be surprised by the cool manner in which Lady Malfoy appraised them, both of them. After all, was she not Slytherin’s mudblood? Hermione hadn’t been sure why a Lady of the Noble Twenty-Eight would be summoning a mudblood and her muggle mother, and had only hoped that Lady Malfoy would be too refined to show the vitriol Hermione faced at school.

“My son speaks of you as a friend, Miss Granger,” Lady Malfoy said as steaming teacups appeared in front of them. 

“Thank you, ma’am,” Hermione said, not missing the flash in the cool blue eyes which peered down at her. Mrs. Granger was tense but quiet at the other end of the table. Hermione resolved to never call another woman ‘ma’am.’ “He has been very helpful at Hogwarts,” she tried instead. That was how she had framed it to her parents, after all. ‘Helpful.’ 

“I am sure,” Lady Malfoy replied, a smaller smile at the corner of her lips. “We, of course, know all of Draco’s friends, so I naturally felt inclined to know you as well. We are to understand you to be quite a gifted muggleborn.”

“I enjoy learning,” Hermione flushed at ‘gifted.’ She couldn’t imagine Draco having complimented her to such an extent, and Lady Malfoy certainly hadn’t made it sound like a compliment.

“We’re quite honored to have Hermione at Hogwarts,” Mrs. Granger stepped in, hesitant smile thinning as Lady Malfoy’s sharp tilt of the head made it clear that this too had been a poor choice of words.

“Hogwarts is predisposed to generosity,” Lady Malfoy chuckled. “A more selective school is not as traditional, and my own family, the Blacks, has always been exceptionally traditional. But tell me, Miss Granger, have you been enjoying Hogwarts? Such a change of pace was surely difficult?”

“I enjoy the change immensely,” Hermione assured Lady Malfoy and found herself relaxing ever so slightly as the Lady finally curved her index finger around her teacup, raised the delicate porcelain to her lips, and took a silent sip.

Hermione took the cue and took a sip of her own, trying to copy the motions.

She missed the quirk of the lips her careful actions warranted.

“And a Slytherin, no less,” continued Lady Malfoy. “Slytherin is, of course, a very traditional house. Muggleborns often find it tiresome, as I recall.”

“Not at all,” promised Hermione earnestly. This game was a bit easier to follow, if not thanks to Liam and Agartha’s cold-and-hot responsiveness. “I have been very fortunate to receive the guidance of my older housemates. They have been so very diligent about teaching me wizarding traditions. I feel the other houses neglect tradition, in comparison.”

Lady Malfoy hummed. “Tradition is often boring for the young.”

Mrs. Granger looked between the two of them cautiously, eyes wide, and sipped at her tea. 

There was silence between the three females, and then Lady Malfoy looked out over the lawns. “So then, a muggleborn in Slytherin who enjoys the more traditional view,” she said, blue eyes considering the white clouds painted across the sky. “A forward-looking girl such as yourself must have already considered life after Hogwarts?”

Hermione delicately sipped her tea, swallowing. “Not as much,” she finally chose to say, carefully avoiding looking at her mother. “I would like to learn a bit more before deciding, of course, and I am sure I will find a niche more suitable than others over time.”

“Very wise,” Lady Malfoy condescended. “Of course, your way is eased, with a friend like Draco.”

“I hope to be of assistance to him as well,” Hermione smiled uneasily at the Lady Malfoy, who’s gaze had yet turned colder. “We enjoy studying together, and he has great things planned for himself, following in his father’s footsteps.”

Hermione hitched her breath at the now-ice-cold gaze which peered at her over the rim of the Lady Malfoy’s porcelain. “Lord Malfoy has recently been quite busy in the Wizengamot, I am to understand. I have been hoping he succeeds with the bill he is attempting to fight the… oh, I have forgotten the name of it,” Hermione stuttered instead of saying the rather blatant name of the Muggle Protection Act, glancing at her mother quickly. Her mother, fortunately, mistook her flush for embarrassment at having forgotten. “…The one intended to allow Ministry raids on nobles' homes for the confiscation of heirlooms.” 

Lady Malfoy arched a brow. 

“Draco and several others were very upset,” Hermione quickened to explain, brown eyes wide and mouth twitching as she stuttered slightly. Her hands fluttered around her teacup, and she fought to steady them. “I thought it also a horrible law, you know, allowing raids without any sort of evidence.”

“A thoughtful girl,” Lady Malfoy said finally, and Hermione took a breath of relief. “Lord Malfoy is working very hard to ensure it does not get passed. I will be sure to let him know about your well-wishes.”

Hermione was not sure that would be a good thing.

“And you, Mrs. Granger?” Lady Malfoy suddenly addressed the quiet Mrs. Granger, who smiled a tremulous smile. Her daughter had tried to warn her, but Lady Malfoy was not kind in her questions. It was hard to decide what was harder to understand: the veiled vitriol of this beautiful, fashionable lady who seemed to be two or three centuries behind the times, or her daughter, who had always been clever but was now speaking ancient tongues that belonged behind feathered fans?

“I’m sorry?” Mrs. Granger wasn’t sure what Lady Malfoy had asked – or if she had finished an actual question.

“You said you were honored to have a witch for a daughter,” Lady Malfoy’s pale blue eyes flashed over the rim of her teacup. “… how has the wizarding world been treating you?”

“Oh,” Mrs. Granger jerked her chin back. “Well.” She took a quick sip of tea. “It isn’t… strictly speaking, easy. The statute of secrecy, we understand, of course, but it really is like Hermione goes to another world.” She tittered, a sure sign that she was nervous.

Lady Malfoy arched a brow, and her tone stayed decidedly cool. “That would be horrible. You must fret. But you can owl, surely, so it is not so different from any other boarding school.”

Mrs. Granger hesitated. “If your son were to be hurt,” she began carefully, “you could go to Hogwarts and pick him up.”

Lady Malfoy smiled slowly. “Of course. In an instant. And Lord Malfoy is on the board of governors, so he is kept aware of the day to day status of the school.”

Mrs. Granger smiled a bitter smile in return. “We have no such recourse. “

Lady Malfoy waved this off as though she had not just made Mrs. Granger’s point. “And what of your daughter’s segregation from the muggle world? Some muggle parents find it hard, we understand.”

Mrs. Granger’s expression suggested that she doubted the Lady Malfoy understood anything from a muggle’s perspective, but she also hesitated. “Segregation?”

“Why, yes,” Lady Malfoy spoke with a narrative tone, smooth as silk, her eyes almost lazy as she reproached Mrs. Granger. “No more muggle schools, no more muggle events. Her friends will be wizards, and she’ll go to wizarding events, which will be very difficult in turn for you to attend. In some cases, even dangerous, you know, non-magical creatures and magical places can actually react to each other very poorly.” 

Mrs. Granger paled slightly. Hermione focused on keeping her face carefully sympathetic. This was a conversation she was not planning on having with her parents. Not yet, and hopefully not ever. 

Hermione had read the stories in _The Invasive Muggleborn_ ; parents were one of the leading ‘pulls’ back into the muggle world for muggleborns, as awful as it was to think. The muggleborn had trouble getting a job or fitting in. The muggleborn moved back in with their parents. The muggleborn met a muggle through their parents’ social circles, and the muggleborn moved down the block from their parents. The muggleborn had half-blood children who would be raised entirely in the muggle world until Hogwarts.

Hermione, in contrast, had no such plans to stay in her parents’ circle. How could she, when all the doors to which she wanted access were in the Wizarding World?

“I’m sure Hermione and her father and I will continue to enjoy summers together,” Mrs. Granger said carefully after an uncomfortable pause and audible swallow. “And we’re very supportive of this new path forward for her. After all, it is about what Hermione wants.”

Hermione smiled, tighter than she had intended. Warmth filled her at her mother’s words, but also a small seed of dread. 

“That is very generous of you, I am charmed,” Lady Malfoy replied. Hermione had no doubt that the Lady Malfoy was not at all charmed.

There was a quiet pause.

“Is Draco here?” Hermione asked, casting her eyes to look up over the porch and trellis. “I would love for a chance to say hello to him before we return to the inn.”

“My son is not here, he is off visiting friends,” Lady Malfoy replied dismissively.

“We are very grateful for your invitation,” Hermione said, taking the final sip of her tea and setting the cup gently down. Her mother had been badgered enough, and Hermione would have other opportunities to speak to Lady Malfoy. She was certain of it. This had been some sort of prod into the muggleborn Draco Malfoy had mentioned, and the Lady Malfoy seemed satiated. “I hope you are not offended, but we should be getting back to my father. He is hoping for another walk before dinner.”

Lady Malfoy gave a much breezier smile than any of the previous expressions. She stood gracefully from the table in a single, gracious movement. “Of course. Atsy will see you out. Atsy!”

Mrs. Granger jumped slightly as the house-elf appeared a little over a foot away from the table. Lady Malfoy’s smile slipped slightly. Mrs. Granger was more than ready to escape, however, and quickly hurried to her feet as well.

“Atsy, please escort Mrs. and Miss Granger back to the road.” Lady Malfoy commanded the elf.

“Yes, Missus Lady,” Atsy bobbed. Hermione and Mrs. Granger were led back through the solarium, the sitting room, and at last, the front door at a slightly faster pace than they had come through.

“A moment, Miss Granger,” Lady Malfoy called back, at the entrance to the solarium through the sitting room.

Hermione stepped back through the front door, leaving her mother on the other side. Atsy stayed at her mother’s ankle. Hermione tried to rush gracefully back to Lady Malfoy, who made no attempt to move further into the house.

“Yes, Lady Malfoy?”

The Lady Malfoy tipped her head in a gracious acquiescence but did not smile. “You performed admirably,” she said.

Hermione flushed. “Thank you, Lady Malfoy.”

“There are other utterances. Not only Draco speaks,” continued Lady Malfoy archly. “And so I will give you a piece of advice, and I strongly recommend you take it. You will have to choose. Your parents love you very much, and that is good of them.” Lady Malfoy’s tone was flat, carefully wiped of emotion. “I love my son, and I can see that your mother holds your being close to her heart as well. So know that when I tell you that you will have to choose, I also know that it will hurt. But you will. You cannot have both this world and her world.”

Hermione blinked, eyes slightly watering. “Because it is not possible, it is not probable, or because you will not let me?” She asked softly and then blinked back her tears properly. “I apologize. That was rude.”

“It was, but I must salute you,” the Lady Malfoy said coldly. Her blue eyes looked down at Hermione, and Hermione found herself thinking of her Boy. Her Boy, who had no arrogance and seemed incapable of feeling ill-will towards anything. His world, dark and strange though Hermione saw it, would have to be a paradise compared to what fears and shadows the Lady Malfoy had to tuck away behind her skirts and pearls. “I do not rightly know the answer myself.”

“I thank you as well,” Hermione added, noting that her mother was shifting enough to cast a dancing shadow through the still-open front door. “This was beyond generous of you, and I will earn the right to drink tea at your table a second time, I promise you.”

And at last, Lady Narcissa Malfoy gave Hermione a true smile. It was beautiful as it ought to have been. “I have no doubt you will, Miss Granger.”

“Please give my regards to Draco,” Hermione said, feeling a great weight lift from her shoulders.

She turned as Lady Malfoy nodded and trotted back to her mother.

Atsy closed the door and skipped ahead down the path through the orchard.

Mrs. Granger remained completely quiet until they were safely on the other side of the gate, and Atsy had popped out of sight.

And then she exploded. “What a horrible woman!” She cried. “I hope that was not too hard on you, Hermione, I would have never suggested we accept if I had known she would be so rude!”

Hermione smiled faintly at her mother. Mrs. Granger, average height and average build, in good shape but not excellent form. She had wispy curls to her hair that became more untamable with every year and was utterly unremarkable. Hermione had not given a lot of thought to her parents. They were smart, but not intellectuals. They were dentists, with a modest income and gentle hearts, but little else to recommend them. Mr. Granger was already becoming slightly fatigued by the trip, and Mrs. Granger anxious.

“I’m sorry she was rude,” Hermione said, locking the thoughts away for reflection later. Perhaps when she found herself faced with the decision, they would be meaningful, but until then, her parents were hers. “Draco can be a bit arrogant, I told you, and I did warn you that his mother might be the same.”

“Well certainly,” Mrs. Granger said crossly, “but this isn’t the 1800s, you know. Just because she comes from nobility doesn’t mean she can look down on us!”

Hermione mostly felt a sense of relief that her mother thought the bias stemmed from an issue of money rather than blood and magic. 

“I think she can do what she pleases,” Hermione said, purposefully dry. “But please, mum, let’s just enjoy the rest of the day? Draco Malfoy is pleasant enough, and his mother is not, let us just leave it there.”

It was with great resolve that Hermione closed her room door the night the Granger’s returned from their travels. Hedwig sat on the stand they had bought for her, and the owl studied Hermione as she bustled about her room. Hermione unpacked her clothes and put out parchment and quill. She fussed around a bit, listening to her parents move around the house, and then she sat down at her desk.

 _Dear Jason_ , she wrote in a careful hand. _I hope this letter finds you in good health. I wanted to thank you for the kindness you showed me at Hogwarts. I cannot offer much at this time, but will not forget that kindness, and hope to one day repay you. I have just returned from France, where I enjoyed tea with Lady Malfoy. We saw our first Veela firefight, and Sur-la-Terrasse was every bit as charming as Parkinson and Greengrass said it would be. I am glad to be returned to Britain, however. I hope your summer is proceeding well and that you are in good spirits with your legal freedoms before you. Please write back, should you wish to._

_Fondly –_

Hermione stopped herself from writing her name. She wasn’t sure who would see the letter, she realized, and Yaxley was a name that had been written in dark ink in the last war. The way Hermione was treated at school was probably a small inkling of what occurred when no one was watching, and no one was watching Hermione – or Jason. Jason could read, and Hermione thought he likely understood his situation – he was simple-minded, but functional. His magic, feeble, still managed. After several minutes of indecision, she left the letter unsigned and wrote out Jason’s name on an envelope. She sealed the letter and clicked her tongue to Hedwig.

“You won’t mind delivering a letter for me, right?” She asked the snowy owl kindly. Hedwig was a bit stoic, but never did more than nip Hermione’s fingers and accept the things Hermione had set up for her. 

Hedwig let loose a low sound that seemed affirmative. Hermione held out the letter and double-checked that the window was open enough that Hedwig would be able to fly back in. 

“Make sure to find something juicy on your way back,” Hermione said as Hedwig accepted the letter, hopping from her perch to the windowsill and fluffing her wings up. She watched the owl’s silent take-off and let her lips drop into a small frown.

It was three weeks to term, and Mr. and Mrs. Granger would not be able to take Hermione into Diagon Alley for another week. Hermione had finished her summer homework and Agartha’s books, detailed notes written in a few notebooks with a muggle pen and labeled. She could re-read them, of course, or go to bed as was sensible at the late hour.

Restlessness persisted.

Hermione left her bedroom and padded into the bathroom, brushing her teeth. When she returned, Hildr was curled up on the covers of the bed, watching her. Hermione gave a relieved huff. She had left Hildr in London with apologies, certain that a four week holiday in France would not let the large serpent go unnoticed with her parents. Hildr hadn’t seemed to mind, and she accepted soft strokes on the crown of her head as Hermione greeted her.

“Is He near?” Hermione asked Hildr, not for the first time wishing she could understand the soft hiss of reply. “I would feel Him if he were, of course,” she sighed. 

Hildr nudged her. 

Hermione changed into her pajamas and paced the room a few turns before finally facing her bed. She slid under the covers, nudging Hildr out of the way gently when the large serpent’s bulk prevented her from stretching out her legs.

“I’m twelve now,” she considered to the ceiling, keeping her voice low enough that her parents would not hear it, far down the hall as they were. “I’ll be a second year at Hogwarts’ School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I have a friend, and He is magic itself, and that alone surpasses all the grief I have taken as a muggle-born. My parents love me…” she trailed off as she recalled Lady Malfoy’s parting words.

Later, when she was not twelve and so young. As sensible a child as she could be, Hermione knew there was no point lingering on such useless thoughts.

When Hermione woke the next morning, there were three letters on her desk. Hedwig was asleep on her perch, and Hildr was staring out the window, wound like a spool against Hermione’s pillow with just enough of her body stretched so that her head rested on the windowsill.

The morning light was still young, considering how late Hermione had gone to bed the previous evening. There were no other sounds in the house, but a quick check of the clock on her nightstand assured Hermione that it would be a scant few moments before her parents had to get out of bed and get ready for work. 

Deciding to hold off on going downstairs, Hermione instead approached the letters on her desk. She huffed out a burst of laughter when she realized the handwriting and then the names in short succession: Miss Bulstrode, Miss Greengrass, and Miss Parkinson. 

‘We write to each other during the summer,’ Pansy had said in the dormitories. Hermione had not realized that meant they would write to her, and her cheeks flushed slightly in triumph. Gathering the letters in her hand and pressing them to her chest, Hermione took a moment, pressing her eyelids shut. She was not discontent, stuck between the walls of Slytherin and the rest of the school. Not with her Boy and His magic, His serpents, and His blessing. But Hermione would need into the rest of the Wizarding World, and her Boy was not the key to that lock. Her year mates were such a key. They had chosen to write her during the summer when no mention of her name would come up and –

Hermione paused, cracking on eye back open at the three letters. Three all at once was a bit suspicious. Coordinated.

She plucked her wand off her desk and tapped the top letter in her hand, well aware that she knew few revealing spells that would actually reveal anything. The letter sparked casually; it carried a bit of magic on it, as any owl-ferried letter would.

Hermione used her wand to open the envelope, setting the other two down.

Dear Hermione, Pansy’s fashionable cursive read. Based on your plans, I suspect you have returned from France recently, but I left this letter with the post office to wait for your owl. I hope you enjoyed Sur-la-Terrasse – we heard at Afternoon Tea that you even took a cup with Lady Malfoy! Isn’t their estate grand? We’ve only been invited over once ourselves: the Malfoys don’t use it for casual entertaining. I love the atrium, though. Unfortunately, the most recent talks of engagement between myself and Draco have fallen through, so I will have to abandon my plans to re-paint the walls an egg-shell blue. Now my parents are discussing Zabini, which is absurd. I hope to talk them towards someone fashionably older…

Hermione’s eyebrows were beginning to strain with how high they’d arched. She had heard this sort of talk come out of Pansy’s mouth, usually directed at her fellow year mates but never Hermione herself. This was… this was casual gossip, Hermione mused, a small sense of triumph blooming again. Pansy Parkinson, snobbish, pureblooded witch, was gossiping to her, a muggleborn.

Hermione sat down in her desk chair with a thump and dragged over quill and parchment.

Pansy’s letter was not short. There was a brief mention of a few other engagements that were neither invitation nor bragging. Half-way down the second page, Pansy prompted that Millicent, Pansy, and Daphne would be meeting up in Diagon Alley on the 11th of August with a chaperone to get their school supplies. Hermione was welcome to join them, there would not be boys present.

At this, Hermione paused. That was an invitation, and her eyes wandered back up the parchment. Lady Malfoy had invited her to tea and had then mentioned it to some sort of group of ladies of which Pansy had been a part.

Hermione pushed the parchement and quill back away and instead finished reading Pansy’s prose. The girl mentioned a few new fashion trends, rambled about which holiday homework she had enjoyed and which she had not, and finished with a lofty _Sincerely, Miss Pansy Parkinson_.

Hermione set Pansy’s letter to the side. Millicent’s was far briefer, only three-quarters of a page, but no less open than Pansy’s words had been. She also mentioned leaving the letter at the office for the owl to pick up when Hermione was back in the country. Millicent devoted all but the last line of her letter to telling Hermione about her holidays, spent doing homework – one sentence, and of her collection of Krups – eleven sentences. The last line said that she expected to see Hermione in Diagon Alley when the girls met up.

Pansy had made it seem casual, Millicent – not out of character – had made it seem like a demand.

Furrowing her brow, Hermione turned to Daphne’s letter. Daphne had remained apathetic to Hermione throughout the school year. She had not joined in many taunts, had referred to Hermione as ‘mudblood’ with a sort of interchangeable tone that made the word seem as bland as ‘Granger,’ ‘Parkinson,’ or ‘Bulstrode.’ She had not become more interested when Hermione had been invited to join them for study groups.

Thus, it could be reasoned, her letter would be the most honest.

Daphne’s letter was less congenial than Pansy’s and less friendly than Millicent’s. It was stiff and formal, exactly the way a letter from a brief acquaintance might be between two adults.

Hermione read through the half-page carefully. Hermione had been brought up at Afternoon Tea. During a smaller outing, Parkinson and Bulstrode had determined that the only thing left to do was to try to groom Granger to be more respectable. Daphne had no objections, and so Hermione was expected to join them.

The 11th was tomorrow. Hermione leaned back in her chair and focused on the house’s sounds. Her mother had gotten up in the past few minutes, and usually took a full cup of tea and breakfast before work, while Mr. Granger tended to leap out of bread and take whatever toast was left on his wife’s plate before driving them both to work.

Hermione got up from her chair and hummed thoughtfully. “Best wait until dinner,” she decided to Hildr, who wiggled the tip of her tail rather than look up from the window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone can blame Ginny Weasley for holding this up.


	7. The Cane Tapping Against the Cobblestones

The Leaky Cauldron was as dingy and uninviting as the first two times Hermione had seen it. The first time, she had accompanied Professor Sprout with her parents in tow for a short introduction to the Wizarding World and receive her wand. There had been three other muggleborn students: two would end up in Hufflepuff, and one in Ravenclaw. Hermione vaguely recalled their names.

Mostly, she recalled the ginger manner in which her parents had followed Professor Sprout into the Leaky Cauldron. The muggleborn parents had clung to the mutual disorientation and revulsion to the Wizarding World entrance, and by the end of the short two-hour tour, many had been more than happy to leave.

It had been difficult to get Mr. and Mrs. Granger to go back for her books, robes, and other school things. Accepting that their daughter could do things most daughters could not, Hermione’s parents had managed admirably, but that hadn’t made them any more eager to go back through the Leaky Cauldron. Its appearance and placement in London was exactly the sort they avoided taking their daughter or themselves. The interior of the alley was no mopped tile and shined chrome of the modern shopping center.

Mrs. Granger gave the Leaky Cauldron a grim assessment from the driver’s seat. “You’re certain you’ll be alright?” She asked Hermione. 

“It’s just a few hours, mum,” Hermione promised. “And now we don’t have to go on the weekend.”

“And it will be nice for you to see your friends,” Mrs. Granger mused. Hermione had slightly played up the amiability of her year mates. Having always been concerned about Hermione’s lack of social life, Mrs. Granger had been thrilled.

“And there’s a chaperone,” Hermione reminded her mother. 

“Yes.” Mrs. Granger nodded in agreement but let her eyes be drawn back to the Leaky Cauldron's dank exterior. 

“I’ll call the office when I get home,” prompted Hermione, repeating one of the other promises she had put out the previous evening in an attempt to ease her parents to the notion of the outing.

With one last hesitant look over Hermione’s shoulder at the grimy pub, Mrs. Granger sighed and nodded. “Alright. Have a good time with your friends.”

Hermione bobbed her head and waved as her mother’s window rolled up, and the car rolled away from the sidewalk. The corner of the street was busy but not overflowing as it did on the weekends. As soon as Hermione made it to the tiny alcove which formed the Leaky Cauldron’s entrance, pedestrians stopped jostling her as the muggle-repelling wards worked their magic.

The absurd pun cheered Hermione as she brushed into the Cauldron. It was quiet inside. Two wizards were sitting at the long dining table on opposite sides, and the rest of the tables were empty. The bartender was reading a newspaper and barely glanced up at the bell's chime over the door.

Hermione hurried through the dark pub and into the alley. She tapped the bricks with her wand and moved through the entrance as it folded open. The café she had been told to meet the other girls at was past Ollivanders, where Diagon Alley turned a corner and kept going. Hermione hadn’t realized the alley to be bigger, exactly. Still, she supposed it made sense: there were plenty of little shops between the Leaky Cauldron and Ollivanders, but hardly enough to make Diagon Alley the bustling center of Wizarding London most people claimed. The Alley itself was busy but not frothing with people, and Hermione had no trouble making her way past the shops she had visited the previous summer. 

Past Ollivanders, Diagon Alley sharply narrowed as four storefronts seemed to compete for additional space on the street surface. There was an elbow curve, then the street widened, although not as much as Diagon Alley's front. A single street vendor was prepping his cart for the day, and compared to the rest of Diagon Alley, the three or four window shoppers made the street appear a ghost town.

Despite the street being narrower, allowing only four or five people to walk abreast on either side instead of massive gaggles, lamp posts and small planters with trees had been planted in the middle of the cobblestone, creating a genteel atmosphere.

Hermione looked at the signs. There was the _Tudor Inn_ , an herbalist and apothecary shop called _Perennials_ , a gilded clothier called _Twilfitt and Tattings_ , and a narrow assortment of other storefronts with less distinct signs. There was a decidedly upscale air to many of them in comparison to Diagon Alley. Hermione supposed, as she began walking slowly down the cobblestones to appraise each storefront, that if Knockturn Alley were to be a dark and dangerous version of Diagon Alley, it served to reason a more pretentious and exclusive shopping center would be needed.

_The Dutchess_ was an excellent example. The café, unlike the rest of the Alley, was full of young ladies, many of whom Hermione knew by face, if not by name. The outside of the café looked not dissimilar to the Malfoy Estate outside of Sur-la-Terrasse, and Hermione swallowed a bit before opening the double french doors. 

A freckled footman stood in the flag-stone set entryway and held out his arm. “Your coat, miss.” 

Hermione handed it to him, not missing the way the boy’s eyes trailed down her muggle outfit in stiff discomfort. He thought she was lost, she surmised grimly. The nearest table had noticed her as well, a group of older women who scrutinized her with clear disapproval.

“I’m meeting friends here,” she told him, pursing her lips slightly. “Miss Parkinson, Miss Greengrass, and Miss Bulstrode.”

“They are in the atrium, miss,” the footman replied, relaxing. “They are expecting you.”

Not that it should have mattered, Hermione groused internally. There was no sign forbidding muggleborns or mudbloods, no pretentious claim that the café required reservations or anything.

Hermione moved past the older women through a series of spread-out tables that all seemed to bear some sort of privacy charm. There was the gentle sound of women’s voices, a quiet murmur with the occasional tinkling laugh, but Hermione couldn’t hear any distinct words. The Atrium was an obvious room, accessible from three different French doors thrown wide open. Through them, a sea of greenery and colored glass created a distinctly beautiful sight. Silk cranes fluttered from branch to branch as Hermione entered the atrium proper.

She paused a moment to enjoy the sight. The silk cranes notwithstanding, much of the room's beauty was in its design, not magic. 

Pansy, Daphne, and Millicent were easy to find, sitting at a table in direct line-of-sight to the doors. Each one was dressed in a long-sleeved dress of simple cut but fine fabric and wearing a hat. The skirts were voluminous, and Pansy’s showed off patterned show-petticoats beneath. Pansy wore dark blue, Daphne dark green, and Millicent a dark umber. The dress style, formal and conservative to Hermione’s eyes, was all over the shop. 

“Granger,” Millicent greeted stiffly.

Pansy lazily brushed a crumb of the puff from her sleeve. “And how are you, Hermione?” She asked, purposefully emphasizing the first name. 

Hermione took the fourth seat, flattered to see that they had even ordered a pastry and a cup of tea for her. “I’m well, thank you,” she demurred. Millicent said nothing, busy taking her first bite of pastry. She had obviously been waiting impatiently for the chance.

“How was France?” Pansy asked before Hermione could attempt to exchange courtesies.

“It was lovely,” Hermione said, restraining her enthusiasm at the last moment. “The Malfoy manor was astonishing, but Sur-la-Terrasse was gorgeous all of itself.”

“It’s been ages since we’ve gone,” sighed Pansy, brown eyes completely earnest as she seemed to remember some fond memory. “It’s not considered fashionable right now, among the adults, I mean.”

“Oh?” Hermione blinked, not having expected the twist. “Why would it matter?”

“Well, it’s court politics, isn’t it?” Pansy told her. Millicent made an impatient sniff, but Daphne quirked her lips. “Veela Court, I mean. The current Wizengamot is very unfriendly towards creatures, and the Veela Matriarch has put the responsibility of righting that attitude on the Noble Twenty-Eight of Britain.”

“Who can’t get a lot done,” mused Hermione.

“And we can’t go to Veela seats like Sur-la-Terrasse without presenting ourselves, and that is very uncomfortable right now, so we don’t.”

“You mean your parents don’t,” Millicent rolled her eyes. “There isn’t anything stopping you.”

“Except a chaperone,” Pansy groused.

“Wasn’t there one today?” Hermione asked, looking around curiously. 

Pansy perked up. “My brother. He won’t actually be with us, of course, but he’s nearby and mindful.”

“A tether spell,” Daphne explained in a show of generosity that Hermione hadn’t seen from her before. “It's sort of a temporary connection between two people; the caster is sensitive to what the target feels. If Pansy became panicked, he would know and be able to search us out in short order. She can also reach out to him more directly.”

“How interesting.” It sounded a bit dangerous. “Is the cast based on an agreement, or could anyone cast it on someone else?”

“This one requires a form of permission,” Pansy informed Hermione. “It's quite common among noble families. There are less pleasant versions, where the caster can ‘break’ through the target, but it can’t be done subtly, so you would know that you were being monitored and to get help.”

“That’s a relief,” Hermione breathed. “I’m surprised there isn’t anything like that used it at Hogwarts.”

Daphne and Pansy shared a glance.

“There are monitoring charms at Hogwarts,” Millicent’s lips had turned down in an irritated snarl.

“Not as invasive, of course,” Pansy hurriedly promised Hermione. “More blanket-like. They only really notice extreme distress or unwilling departure, and they can’t use it to figure out exactly where you are the way a proper tether would.”

“But as a result, noble families cannot use chaperone spells in the halls, and in fact, it is… frowned upon,” Daphne frowned as well. 

“Frowned upon?”

“Certain families began thinking of the practice as wrong, due to the possible invasion of privacy,” Pansy clarified. “It's not illegal, but it does any family who uses it no political favors.”

“Not that it stops any of us,” noted Millicent.

“I see,” Hermione responded, delicately sipping her tea. 

There was a brief period of adjustment, and then Pansy began talking. She took the longest to finish her tea, excited about the latest fashions declared in Witches Weekly. Once Pansy was on the last bite of pastry, Daphne raised a small bell that had been resting at the center of the table, and it chimed pleasantly.

A second later, a well-dressed house-elf appeared. The butler’s coat was tailored but did nothing to hide the thin legs and bulging belly.

“Hows can Tols being assisting yous, missies?” The house-elf asked politely. 

Hermione was surprised to see it. She knew house-elves were common with even moderately well-off families, although they often only had one or two to the Malfoy’s likely dozen. Still, her short foray into their existence suggested they were household companions, not used by businesses, or useable by businesses.

“We would like our check, please,” Daphne said. 

Tols looked pleased to snap his fingers and reach up to put the check on the table. Daphne withdrew galleons from a small pouch slung around her shoulder.

“On beings be-half of the Dutchess, Tols be thanking miss,” Tols gave a short bow and vanished with the coins in hand.

“Thank you for paying,” Hermione told Daphne.

“We rotate,” Daphne said, slightly stiff.

“Of course,” Hermione smiled as warmly as she could. “I’ll pay next time if no one minds.”

“Of course not, Hermione,” Pansy smirked. She stood up from her chair and put her palms on the table. Hermione noticed a lady at the next table over frowning at the display. “Now then. Shopping?”

Millicent sighed. “Oh, alright. But let us please not spend forever looking at robes, Parkinson.”

“I am sure Hermione and I would like proper time allotted to Flourish and Blotts,” Daphne agreed, frowning at Pansy.

Hermione, for her part, was not surprised at the divide in time allotments between the girls. “I need new robes,” she told Pansy. “So, if you promise to help me find some, I won’t complain if you look.”

Pansy’s smile widened into a genuine laugh, and she triumphantly tilted her chin to Daphne and Millicent.

They proceeded to flounce, for lack of a better word, out of _The Dutchess_ , following Pansy. She directly took them to _Twilfitt and Tattings_ , bodily hauling Hermione inside when the other girl hesitated to stare at the robes enchanted to sway back and forth in the display as if the invisible wearer were dancing.

A stiff-looking man looked up from a counter where he was guiding scissors to cut fabric with his wand, thread spooling under his watchful gaze at the same time. His silver hair was cut short to his scalp, and his robes were tailored to fit his measurements such that even Hermione could tell.

“Welcome to Twilfitt and Tattings,” the man said, voice soft. He waved his wand, and the spells on the scissors and thread ceased gracefully. “May I be of assistance, Miss Parkinson?”

“Hello, Mister Twilfitt,” Pansy smiled graciously, suddenly calm and steady in her every move. It was the most of ‘Miss Parkinson’ that Hermione had ever seen. “We’re just browsing, thank you.”

‘Just browsing,’ became an exercise in patience rather quickly. Hermione settled on an inexpensive set of robes that were made from batinga wool: good for variable environments. They were plain, to Pansy’s immense distress, but Mister Twillfitt had waved his wand a few times and within a matter of minutes, the robes had been tailored to Hermione’s body. 

“I feel… cute,” she whispered to Pansy, awed. The mirror showed her normal bushy hair, helpless and determined, and her wide brown eyes. It also showed a borderline feminine form that hid away the coltish legs and whimsy waist of prepubescence. The robes were a little more robe-fashioned compared to the elegant dresses currently sported by her peers, but Hermione felt tremendously fashionable in that instant, staring herself down in the mirror.

“Well-tailored robes are a must,” Pansy sniffed in return. “Our school robes are not concerned with such things – Twilfitt and Tattings won’t even carry them – and of course anyone but Professor Snape will stop you from wearing proper robes like these.” The girl gestured to her dress.

“Seems an odd thing to restrict, choice in clothing,” Hermione mused, entranced with her reflection. She had never put much stock in being pretty – what was the point? She wasn’t a pretty girl. Her parents were plain, her hair was outrageous, and her eyes like mud.

“Such is our lot in life,” Pansy proclaimed, unhelpful but dramatic. “Now then, this set is a must. What should we try next?”

“Oh,” Hermione blushed. “I can only buy one set, you know, and my school robes.”

Pansy looked properly put out and set to argue. 

“I’m ready to go,” Millicent interjected forcefully, having wandered over from where she had been browsing the selections. Hermione got the sense the girl was frustrated.

“As am I,” Daphne appeared at her elbow. “I do hope you are getting those, Hermione.”

Hermione nodded. “Yes, I think I shall,” she asserted, hoping that was enough to stop Pansy from pressing. She had tried on at least six sets of robes and two dresses, and Pansy had scarcely let her look in the mirror before pushing her back into the dressing room each time. This had been the first set of robes the other girl had approved of. She knew Daphne and Millicent had both tried on a few things, but Pansy had been too busy using her as a dress-up doll.

She rang up her purchase, awkwardly thanking the stoic Mister Twilfitt while the other girls waited on the small plush seats at the front of the shop.

“Now, school supplies,” Millicent asserted.

“No, apothecary,” Pansy disagreed.

“Why on earth do you need to go to the apothecary? You were there this morning!”

“You yanked me to the café before I could buy anything, you know, and I need to stock up on Glimmer’s Sheen and Shine before we return to Hogwarts. You know they don’t accept owls.”

Hermione tuned out the growing argument, noting Daphne’s refrain as they walked slightly ahead.

Entering Diagon proper, it was clear it would be a pleasant, crowd-free day. Madam Malkin’s only had a single customer, and Gringotts was virtually empty. Hermione had used all of her wizarding money at Twilfitts and Tattings – the robes had been a pretty penny. “I’ll be just a moment,” she promised as the girls waited for their turns to be measured.

She exchanged the muggle money her mother had given her in case she splurged on books and thanked the goblin teller, rushing back to Madam Malkin’s. She wouldn’t have any money for extra books after her school supplies, but Hermione had been clued in at the café that appearance mattered more than she had thought. Investing in good robes might get her closer to better books.

From Madam Malkin’s, who worked as quickly as she had the first year, the girls made their way to the apothecary. They paused in a trinket shop, merrily browsing the shelves. Pansy was a good group leader, energetic and eager to shop. Millicent was more pleasant outside of robe shops and pulled off the shelf at least as many odds and ends as Pansy. She was so enthralled with a kneazle statue that changed poses every few hours that she bought it immediately, cradling it in her arms while they browsed the shelves.

Daphe was more reserved, but Hermione found the girl to be silly in her own way. 

In the apothecary shop, Pansy immediately dragged them to the self-care aisles. The make-up section was surprisingly large, but Hermione found her eyes drawn to the hair-care products.

“Not that one,” Daphne muttered over her shoulder.

Hermione jumped in surprise.

“You’ll need _Tenuis_ ,” Daphne continued, reaching over Hermione’s shoulder to pull a beautiful glass bottle off the shelf.

‘Haircare for the energetic witch,’ the calligraphy proclaimed. It was the same brand that Hermione had been looking at, and expensive. ‘Energetic’ seemed a diplomatic way of saying ‘frazzled,’ which suited Hermione’s hair.

“Products really don’t work on it – ” Hermione began. She had spent an enormous amount of her allowance over the years on products that claimed they would work, and this would be the cost of three muggle brands combined.

“This one won’t help entirely,” Daphne said, eyeing her hair. She did not sound unkind, rather factual. “But it will make it easier to use basic hair-arrangement spells.”

“There are spells for that?” Hermione blurted out, flushing immediately.

“You’d know that if you paused for five minutes to watch us in the morning,” Daphne told her, grey eyes borderline amused. “One bottle should last you half the year.”

It was a lot of galleons, and Hermione would definitely not have leftover money.

She sighed. “Alright.”

“Good girl,” Daphne smirked, handing her the bottle.

Hermione, feeling awkward, scuttled up to the counter to pay, only realizing that she would need to purchase ingredients for Potions too. The shopkeeper, bemused, plucked a “2nd Year Hogwarts” kit off the counter next to the till and added it to the total. 

Hermione hovered in the background, anxiously counting coins in her head, while the other girls paid for their purchases. Where Millicent and Daphne had been disinterested in robes, they both appeared to enjoy self-care products, both purchasing more than Pansy.

It must be nice to be rich. Hermione banished the petty thought from her head as the girls headed for the door.

“What did you get?” Pansy asked Hermione, plucking Hermione’s bag out of her hands and peering in the contents. “Oh, excellent. _Tenuis?_ They’re fantastic for thick hair, you know. Designed from traditional African potions. You can get these little baubles that arrange your hair for you too – the natives use it to spell their braids. They’re exhaustively expensive, though,” Pansy frowned.

Hermione clamped her mouth shut before asking if that was expensive for normal witches or pureblooded witches.

Pansy, however, didn’t notice, and they began making their way down the street. Pansy wanted to stop in every single shop along the way to Flourish and Blotts, and Millicent only complained about half of the stops. Daphne looked increasingly impatient, although remarkably contained for a young girl. Hermione herself felt a bit strained as she realized somewhere between the accessories shop (‘ _merlin, aren’t these puffskin gloves adorable?’)_ and the second knicknack and collections shop (‘ _Pansy look, they’ve got more of the limited edition Young Witches of Paris set_!’) that the Alley had suddenly gotten quite crowded.

It was early afternoon by the time Daphne and she managed to pull the other two girls in front _of Flourish and Blotts_ , and Hermione would dare say that she and Daphne had even bonded over the experience. At the very least, the girl was talking to her in full and continuous sentences.

“Oh bugger,” Pansy scowled at the sign. Hermione frowned at the massive bustle in _Flourish and Blotts_ and the sign that declared:

GILDEROY LOCKHART

MAGICAL ME

SIGNING AT 2 PM

“It’s absolute barmy in there,” Millicent noted.

“We still have half-an-hour before the signing,” Daphne pushed Pansy forward. “Let’s get in and out, come on.”

“Agreed,” Hermione sighed. She didn’t have any extra coins to spend on non-school books, particularly given the long list of Lockhart books on the booklist. “Is he a very good author for defense books?”

“They’re stories of things he’s done,” Daphne shrugged, following Pansy and Millicent through the door. “Popular, although I didn’t much care for them when I read them. _Witches Weekly_ keeps awarding him best smile awards, and you know, a lot of witches are over the moon for him.”

Hermione looked dubiously at the giant stack of Lockhart books standing guard at the store entrance, so voluminous that they had risked tripping over it by entering. The man parading himself over the cover was handsome, with a broad smile and congenial features. His hair was quite sleek and stylish, his blue eyes twinkling with rogueish sheen. 

The store was full of middle-aged witches with out-of-sorts looking males at their elbows. Hermione recognized a few of the kids from Hogwarts.

“Books, c’mon,” Pansy urged. 

“Do none of you want to see him?” Hermione asked.

“Seen him,” Millicent sniffed derisively. “He did a signing for his last two books, and my mum took us to them. He’s a bit disappointing, really.”

Hermione accepted books from Pansy as the other girl braved the crowds to grab books off the shelves and passed duplicates to Daphne and Millicent. The crowd swelled until it was difficult to move without stepping into a flustered witch, and the girls had to actually shove a bit to make it to the register. 

Hermione’s fear of being crushed to death was cut off as bulbs from cameras started flashing, and the chattering volume rose tremendously, the crowd flocking to center on the cause of the commotion. She didn’t pause to look, leading the sprint for the door. 

They caught their breaths outside of Ollivanders, Pansy dramatically leaning against a post. 

“My life just flashed before my eyes,” Millicent declared grimly.

“So very much,” agreed Pansy. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s handsome, but he’s a bit awful to listen to.”

There was a brief pause. “Lunch?” Millicent sounded hopeful.

“Sure,” Pansy agreed easily, looking towards the turn in the Alley that would lead back to _The Dutchess_. Daphne’s expression was a little less agreeable. Hermione thought longingly of her air-conditioned room and the extra pillows that would make reading comfortable, but also nodded her head. 

They headed back towards _The Dutchess_ and made it as far as the Alley's short turn. “Oh, Draco,” Pansy said pleasantly. She bobbed in a curtsy. “Lord Malfoy.”

Hermione copied the other girls' bobs, trying to take in as much of Lord Lucius Malfoy as possible. It was immediately obvious to see where Draco had learned to hold himself. Lady Malfoy had been elegant and serene, but Lord Malfoy held himself with a factual arrogance. His long silver-blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail, the bow colored to match his tailored robes. In his hand, a long black cane topped with a silver serpent head was resting against the cobblestone, although Hermione couldn’t imagine that he needed it.

Lord Malfoy was fit-looking and impressive, right down to how he lifted the tophat off his head and bowed in a perfectly natural motion to the girls, Draco following suit. “Miss Parkinson, Miss Greengrass, Miss Bulstrode.” He paused, icy blue eyes appraising Hermione’s muggle dress. “And you must be Miss Granger.”

Hermione could feel her cheeks dusting with warmth. “Lord Malfoy, it is a pleasure to meet you,” she said, and her voice sounded high. Pansy looked like she was fighting a smirk, but Draco hadn’t seemed to notice.

A small transition seemed to occur, where Lord Malfoy separated himself by taking a barely noticeable step to the side. Draco was left centered to face the girls, which seemed to signal that the children were allowed to greet each other.

“Are you here for school supplies, Draco?” Pansy asked.

“We’re on Gringott’s business,” Draco replied, sounding bored. He had a lazy excess to his posture that Hermione was not used to seeing. “I came with Zabini and Nott last week.”

“Well, I hope your business goes well,” Pansy replied smoothly. She bobbed a curtsy again to both the males, and Hermione followed suit with Millicent and Daphne. Hermione could understand the sudden brevity: this was by far the most offputting she’d ever seen Draco be, and he called her mudblood regularly.

“Ladies,” Draco gave an arrogant bow. Lord Malfoy’s was far more graceful, and his cane tapped steadily against the cobblestones as Draco, and he moved on past the group of girls.

There was a brief pause, and then they broke into simultaneous giggles.

“My word,” Daphne breathed, exasperated but smiling. “He has never been that bad!”

“His peacocks are more graceful,” chortled Pansy. 

The door to _The Dutchess_ opened, and the doorman stepped inside, clearly anticipating their arrival. “Welcome back, misses,” he held the door open for them as they tittered all the way inside.

Once seated at a table by the atrium windows, the conversation turned to a pleasant mesh of school subjects and gossip. Hermione finished her sandwich quickly for lack of saying anything and was careful to only offer input when asked.

By the time lunch was over, even Pansy seemed ready to part ways.

They paid separate bills, and Hermione determined she would need to save more carefully if every shared trip involved dresses and hair products: she had ended the day with two knuts. Pansy hugged her and everyone else before flouncing out of the café. Corbin Parkinson was reading a book at one of the benches outside. He looked somewhat cross at Pansy’s appearance.

“Thank you for your invitations,” Hermione said again to Millicent and Daphne, who were more sedate in pace.

“Of course,” Daphne replied, distractedly checking her purse. “We’ll see you on September 1st, Hermione.”

Hermione left and trotted back through Diagon Alley. It would still be three hours before her parents were off work. With Flourish and Blotts still packed, her plan to perhaps sit in the bookstore and read until she could get a ride home seemed a miserable idea, and she instead headed for the Leaky Cauldron. She would have just enough muggle change to get home using the underground.

The brick entrance was opening as Hermione approached it. A giant gaggle of redheads passed through in a rush, the plump woman at the back loudly declaring her expectations for the group. Hermione recognized four of the boys: the Weasley twins, who were a ‘right but respectable nuisance;” the Prefect, Percy, who ‘was a right berk’ to Slytherins in particular; and Ronald Weasley, whom was something of a bully and not terribly clever. The girl shyly trotting along behind the lady who had to be Mrs. Weasley, Hermione didn’t recognize.

The girl glanced at Hermione, and they studied each other for a brief second. There was something diminished about the girl, Hermione decided, and she was somehow out of place in the group. Hermione turned on her heel to watch the cluster make their way down the Alley in the opposite direction. The girl’s hair was a deep red, not at all orange, her skin pale. Mother Weasley herded the rest of her children before her, and Hermione watched a moment as the girl trotted behind like a forgotten string.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably aroung the age when Hermione first met Him.
> 
> I am horribly out of practice, but this is the core concept. I cannot draw little humans for shit, so I used Agnolo Bronzino's A Young Woman and Her Little Boy (1540, Wikipedia Commons). My fiance (with no context) immediately said "Harry Jesus Potter," so thank you, man I have chosen to spend the rest of my life with.


End file.
